Abyss Given Form
by 6thfloormadness
Summary: The QA shard decides to give Taylor control over something a bit more powerful than mere bugs.
1. 1-1

When I had first gotten shoved into my locker I had yelled, banged my body back against the door, anything I could think of to make some noise, to attract some attention. I had figured that somebody would do something. Even if they didn't confront whoever had put me in here I thought they'd at least go get a teacher. There was blood seeping out of my locker onto the floor and there was the spot where I had thrown up. Someone should have complained to a janitor about the smell, at least. But no, I heard to bell and the hallway slowly emptied. No one came to let me out. I hoped that with everyone in class if I made enough noise I could get someone to come help me. A student going to the bathroom maybe. I banged against the locker though it was beginning to hurt when I did that, at first it had been to try and get someone's attention but after a while it was just to keep me busy so I didn't think about where I was, what I was covered in.

Eventually I heard to bell again as first period ended and students came pouring back into the hall. I slammed the back of my head against the locker door and cried out for help, hoping that somebody would take pity on me. A voice amidst all the background noise caught my attention as it approached the locker.

"Damn Hebert, you're still in there? You really are such weak prey for the predators of this school."

"Sophia," I cried. "Please, let me out of here! I won't even say anything, just get me out!"

Her only response was laughter which faded away into the cacophony of noises as student traveled past my prison. No one helped me, no one approached the locker, nothing. Eventually the bell rang again, signalling the start of second period. I was still trapped in the locker, all alone. No one was going to help me, I realized. I could be in here the rest of the day. I could feel myself hyperventilating. What if a janitor never came by after school let out, would I be in here all night? How long would I be stuck in the locker? Would I die in here? How long does it take to die of thirst? Or would I die from an infection from the filth in here first? What about the bugs in here, would they eat me alive?

[Destination]

[Agreement]

[Trajectory]

[Agreement]

"Please," I quietly sobbed to myself. "Please, someone, anyone, get me out of here."

From out in the hallway I heard a sound that I couldn't quite identify. It wasn't quite an explosion, more like if something spontaneously combusted. Whatever the noise, I did feel a blast of heat from the slots of the locker door against my skull. It wasn't hot enough for my hair to catch fire but it was close.

With the sound of metal tearing a felt the locker door open and I fell backwards onto the floor. I landed in a puddle of...fluid that I would rather not think too hard about. Rolling over onto my hands and knees and after several breaths to compose myself, I stood up to thank my savior. However, the words never left my mouth.

I wasn't a religious person but what stood in front of me could only be described as a demon. I wasn't sure how tall he was but he was big enough that he had to hunch over to avoid hitting the ceiling and the gigantic wings made from fire extending from his back only made him seem even larger. His head wasn't attached to his body, it was a floating skull wreathed in flame with thick, goat-like long horns that curled backwards slightly. The demon was also holding the crumbled remains of my locker door in one of his clawed hands. All in all, this creature would have fit right in on an album cover for a heavy metal band. It was also staring right at me.

I admit it, I screamed. I also collapsed on the floor in a quivering ball.

All of this had precisely zero impact on the giant demon. He neither moved nor spoke. He just stood there, looking straight at me.

"Um...th-thanks for getting me out of the locker Mr. Demon...sir. If you aren't going to k-kill me could you leave now? Please?"

The demon continued to stare at me. Shit, why'd I provoke the monster? I was just worried it might sneeze or something and accidently set me on fire and now it's gonna kill me now. I should have just kept my mouth shut. Suddenly, the demon nodded his head and in a burst of flame, vanished. Huh, that explained the sound from earlier. Fire based teleportation.

 _Wait a second, the demon took my locker door with him!_

 _Okay brain, that is_ _ **so**_ _not the thing to focus on right now. You were just rescued by a fiery demon monster, there are bigger concerns at the moment than the status of the locker. Actually, given what was in there I'm gonna say it was ruined before the door was torn off...damn it brain, I said stop focusing on the locker!_

 _Okay, Okay, calm down. Let's assess the situation. First, I'm alive. Given everything that's happened today, I'm counting that as a major win._

 _So I'm alive, what's next?_

 _I'm still covered in...stuff I don't want to think too hard about lest I throw up again. Right, need to go down to the nurse's office so I can get cleaned up. Also, see if she has a way to find out if I still have my soul. Would hate to find out I accidentally sold it to the demon so that he'd rescue me. What am I saying? Nurses can't check for whether or not someone has a soul, I'd need a priest for that._

I felt pretty blase about potentially selling my soul to escape a locker, I wonder if that meant I really sold it and can't feel anything at all now...or I could just be in shock...probably the latter, that seems a bit more realistic.

If I'm in shock than I definitely need to go see the nurse. I stood up while trying not to touch myself too much, my clothes were...sticky.

Walking was an unpleasant experience but I eventually made it down to the nurse. Her reaction upon seeing me was a few stunned seconds of silence as she stared at me with her jaw open. For some reason I took a bit of pride in handling a situation that left a trained nurse stunned in silence.

Finally, the nurse collected her wits enough to talk to me. "Oh my God sweetie, what...what happened to you? How badly are you hurt?"

Unfortunately, before I could answer the nurse my body finally decided it had had enough stress for the time being and I promptly fainted.

* * *

I woke up in a hospital. That was both good and bad. Good because it meant I was getting some medical care for what had happened, bad because it meant I was in rough enough shape that I needed to be in a hospital. As I glanced around the room, my eyes fell on my dad, asleep in a chair that could not have been very comfortable to sit on, let alone take a nap in. It was nice to see my dad here but that meant I'd have to tell him what happened, something I had been putting off ever since the bullying started which had been...over a year now. Wow, it had been going on for a while. This was not a conversation I was going to enjoy.

However, since Dad's asleep I can shelve that problem in favor of another issue: the demon that helped me out of the locker. Though it retrospect it obviously wasn't a demon, it was cape. One of those monster capes judging from how it didn't look human, although I guess it could be a normal cape that could shapeshift. That was a thing right? While I was more of cape geek than the average person there were still pretty big holes in my knowledge.

I didn't recall hearing about any new heroes joining the Protectorate or the Wards lately. Maybe the demon was an independent? He could be an out-of-towner that just moved here or someone who just got their powers. I should probably check up on villains too. Not sure why a villain would rescue me, but I'd feel pretty stupid if he turned out to have a huge PHO wiki page that I had overlooked just because I didn't include villains in the search.

Although, if I did find out who the demon cape was...what was my plan after that? Track him down and thank him? Would he want to meet me again? Did capes have paperwork? I was pretty good with computers, maybe I could do some secretarial work for him to pay him back?

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Dad starting to stir. Wish I had more time to work out a plan for this conversation...who am I kidding? I was looking for any excuse I could to avoid this talk. If I had more time I wouldn't have planned anything.

* * *

In the end, I wasn't sure who cried more, my dad or myself. It was hard telling him about the locker, harder still to tell him about the bullying and how long it had gone on, but the hardest part was telling him that Emma had been a part of it all. If he had been upset before, after he had found out that tidbit he had nearly gone ballistic. I could see the strain on his face as he attempted not to shout at me. I knew it wasn't me Dad was angry with, it was the situation, but he didn't have anything else he could focus that anger at. He ended up having to leave the room at that point. I was able to hear him shouting at some nearby nurses though I couldn't make out the specifics. Eventually Dad came back in and told me he'd take care of everything and that I should rest.

* * *

It said a lot about the depressing state of my life that I was unsurprised when I eventually found out how little my dad had accomplished. He had gotten the school to pay for my hospital stay and for any medicine I'd need after I was released. I received a small payment for 'pain and suffering' but that was it. There were no 'credible witnesses' to the crime, despite it happening in a hallway full of students. There was no proof the that Trio was responsible so they wouldn't be punished, and we couldn't sue them since Emma's dad was a big shot lawyer. I actually think Dad would have gone through with the lawsuit, regardless of Mr. Barnes's advantage in that situation but I eventually convinced him that it wasn't worth it, that I just wanted to move past everything and not drag things out which even had the benefit of being true. Dad had told me that when I went back to school the faculty would crack down on the bullying, ensure nothing more like that happened to me. To say I was skeptical that they would do anything was an understatement but I didn't mention that to him. I was just glad to be out of the hospital, not just because I was bored but because I had given myself a mission, I wanted to find Mr. Demon and thank him. I didn't care if he turned out to be a villain, I was still going to do it ( _well okay, there were limits, if he was a member of the Slaughterhouse 9 I'd let it go_ ). I liked the sense of purpose it gave me, having a goal.

Sadly, that goal was proving to be a lot harder to reach than I had hoped. While Dad didn't want me leaving the house the first day back, I had insisted on going out on the second day. I used the excuse that after a week in the hospital I was going stir crazy and needed to get out for fresh air. So I had spent several hours at the library using a computer to trawl through the PHO wiki and the forums, looking for anything about my demonic savior.

There were two fire pyrokinetic capes in the area. One was an independent cape named Spitfire, who was a teenage girl, so clearly not the nine foot tall demon I wanted. The other one was Lung, who could turn into some kind of monster the longer he was in a fight. On one hand, Lung didn't seem like the type of person that would rescue a girl from her locker, particularly a white girl. On the other hand, somebody rescued me and Lung sort of fit the criteria I was looking for. Though based on some of the photos I was looking at, Lung tended to become dragony when he transformed, not demony. I'd put him down as a maybe.

Expanding my search to the national level hadn't helped (though it had taken forever to scroll through). There were a lot of capes with varying degrees of fire powers, there was even a monster cape in New Mexico whose body was made of lava, but none of the heroes or villains I came across were demonic in appearance. So if the cape that rescued me wasn't Lung, that meant it was either someone that had gotten their powers recently or they kept a very low profile which can not be very easy to pull off when your head's on fire. That actually had some disturbing implications, if that was the case. As much as I want to thank him, tracking down a cape that's a serial killer would be rather stupid.

My search for pyrokinetic capes was finished. Now onto ones that could change their bodies. This one was gonna be a bit harder to figure out. Information on the Internet is already not that reliable and I can't imagine the capes that can shape change openly advertise every little thing they can do. So even if I find the right cape I might not know it just because they never showed off a demon form before.

With a sigh I began my search, griping wasn't going make this go any quicker so I quickly typed in the relevant information and hit enter. Looked like the only parahumans in the city that could alter their shape were Lung and Hookwolf. If Lung had been a stretch then Hookwolf was an outright impossibility. The man could change his body into a giant wolf made of blades, not remotely what I was looking for.

I glanced at a nearby clock. Ugh, I should probably head home. As restless as hanging out in the house made me, I knew my health wasn't completely back to normal and I would need some sleep soon. I'd be back tomorrow to do my research.

* * *

As I arrived home from my third fruitless day at the library, I flopped down on the couch and screamed into the cushions in frustration. I had finally finished checking every single shapeshifting cape in the country, comparing their known powers, suspected powers, and their last known location with the demon. There were a couple of people that were in the same category as Lung, where they could maybe-sorta-possibly be my savior if I squinted, but I hadn't found anyone that could definitively be identified as the guy that got me out of the locker. On top of all of my online reading, I was also watching the local news on tv plus reading the newspaper daily to see if they was anything being reported that could be attributed to Mr. Demon. Was this how police officers felt when investigating cases? I had spent hours researching and had almost nothing to show for it. Not to mention the school work that my dad had picked up from Winslow that I was supposed to be doing during my recovery so I didn't fall too far behind in my classes. Seemed like I spent all my time either stressed out doing work or asleep. That kind of schedule wasn't doing my health any favors. I was supposed to be getting better, instead I just seemed to be stuck at near exhausted most of the day. Tomorrow I would start searching PHO for teleporting capes but I wasn't very optimistic.

"Is there anyone I can ask for help without letting on the fact that I was rescued by a cape?" I mumbled to myself.

Seeing as my dad was still at work I was quite surprised when a voice answered my question. "Of course my mistress. I live to serve The Abyss Given Form."

I fell off the couch with a yelp as I tried to orient myself towards the voice. Standing in the doorway that led to the kitchen was a cape that...well she was clearly female. She looked like a demon you'd see in a religious themed porno. Large brown leathery wings grew from her back, but while Mr. Demon's fire wings made him seem larger, this lady's wings seemed to be bent or crooked which accentuated her thin frame. She had thin, foot long horns poking out of her red hair, which contrasted nicely with her pale skin. She was wearing something that looked like a underwear as designed by a blacksmith. A sinewy tail stretched out behind her, probably about three feet long. She also had a bust any model would be jealous of and a positively gorgeous face.

"What did you call me?" I asked in confusion as I tried to get my bearings.

"Whether obyrith, lourmara, or tanar'ri; all demons owe our existence to the Abyss. It created us. I can sense a large portion of the essence of the plane that had gone missing now resides within you. Thus, The Abyss Given Form," the demon lady explained. "If you already have a preferred title I will, of course, use that one."

"Uh, just my name, Taylor. Taylor's fine," I said as I reseated myself on the couch and gestured for the demon to take a seat in a nearby chair.

"Certainly...Taylor." She said my name slowly, letting it roll off her tongue in an almost seductive way as she sat down in an exaggerated manner. If I was into chicks I probably would have found her whole demeanor attractive, as it was it was just off-putting. Just the way she held herself, it was like she was silently sending a message, 'I'm so hot, guys will do anything to make me happy. Girls will do anything so they can learn how to be like me.' It actually reminded me Emma (Okay, so did her tits and her hair, but that wasn't what was disturbing me). I decided to try and ignore it for now.

"Alright...so...why and how are you here?"

"You summoned me here from Shendilavri when you asked for help while indicating a need for secrecy. I am well skilled in the arts of seduction and espionage. If you need help gathering information while remaining hidden I can easily assist you, Mistress Taylor."

"Wait, you'll help me just because I asked. No strings attached?" Something was seriously off with this cape, she was being far too nice to me. And what did she mean that part of 'The Abyss' was now in me? And where was Shendilavri?

"Of course Mistress Taylor, you are The Abyss Given Form, Queen Of The Demons, Chaos Embodied. Anything you wish for, we shall strive to provide."

I could practically hear the capitalization in the titles she was bestowing me.

"So you really are a demon and not a cape with a demon theme?"

"Some of my kind originally belonged to one of the mortal races, but we are certainly not human now."

"Wow…a real demon is sitting in my living room." I wanted to smack myself, Mom was an English teacher and had taught me a huge vocabulary of words and here I was struggling to get a sentence out.

The demon lady chuckled. "Well technically that is the word the mortal races use for us. What we prefer to call ourselves is-"

The word she said was long, utterly incomprehensible to me, and I'm pretty sure I saw several birds on the tree outside simultaneously drop dead off the branches just as the word finished leaving her lips.

"Right…please never say that word again. Let's just stick with calling you demons."

"Certainly Mistress Taylor, now how else may this demon assist you?"

I rubbed my head as I tried to work through all the information she was telling me as well as its implications. Before I started finding out more about big stuff like that though, there was something a bit more obvious I needed to find out.

"What's your name?"

"Malcanthet."

 _Seriously? If you want to be that obvious just call yourself malcontent and be done with it._ Out loud I said, "So based on what you're saying, me being the Abyss then-"

"The Abyss Given Form," she corrected.

"Right, that. I'm The Abyss Given Form, so therefore all the demons will do what I say and help me when I need it?"

"If you summon them here, yes they shall."

"How many are there anyway?"

Malcanthet tapped a long fingernail against her chin dramatically.

"When you combine the constant influx of petitioners and the Abyss' ability to spawn new demons, I'm not sure it's actually possible to know the population of the demons at any given time. But I'd estimate it to be at least 50 billion," Malcanthet stated.

 _Golden f-ing Scion on pogo stick, that's a lot of minions._

 _Did I really just refer to them as minions? I wondered to myself. Heroes don't have minions, they have...crap, what do they have? Employees? Volunteers? Note to self, think on this later._

Realizing I had sat there in stunned silence for several seconds I decided to start the conversation again. "So I'm guessing the big guy the rescued me from the locker was one of your demons, what's his name?"

For the first time in the conversation, Malcanthet stopped radiating that smug alpha-bitch body language and looked rather embarrassed.

"His name is Alzrius, he's the Lord of Infernal Light and ruler of Conflagratum," Malcanthet said in the same tone of voice I used when talking about the locker with my dad. "He is extremely short tempered and would not take it well to be referred to as one of 'my' demons. Please do not do so again, if it gets back to him he might decide to kill me for the insult. While I am quite confident in my powers I know my limitations, in a straight fight against him I would lose."

She seemed to quickly rally herself and look more confident. "But I promise you mistress, I shall not remain in my current station for long! I know I am destined for far greater things, I will show you I am worth your attention!"

"Alright, uh, gimme a second to think," I said, to which Malcanthet nodded vigorously.

So based on everything Malcanthet has told me I was pretty sure I had become a cape. Being in the locker had caused me to gain powers, and those powers seemed to be that I could summon demons from some other dimension to serve me. That brought up a lot of questions. How loyal were these creatures? Were they sentient? Malcanthet certainly seemed like a normal person. How responsible was I for their actions? What was I going to do with this power? I stopped and thought about what Mom would say if I asked her that last question. There was really only one answer, I was going to be a hero.

According to movies, videogames, books, basically all of pop culture really, anyone that had the ability to summon demons was obviously evil and must want to take over the world. I wasn't going to do that, but I suspect that was going to be the first thing a lot of people thought when they saw me, that I was a villain, so I'd need some way to disguise my demons.

"Hey Malcanthet, is there anyway to make you guys change your shape to look less fiendish? I don't want to scare people."

"All Incubi and Succubi can alter our forms as desired to look human, it is why we make such excellent spies."

"Those words sound familiar," I muttered to myself, unaware that Malcanthet could hear me.

"We are quite effective at our job, I assure you. Those of higher skill, such as myself, can make use of our mind altering powers while disguised while the lowest ranking Incubi and Succubi can't access any of their powers while disguised. Most fall somewhere in between."

"Wait, did you say mind altering powers?"

"Yes I did Mistress, it makes securing souls to take to the the Abyss so much easier if we can nudge the mind in the right direction. Though the harder we nudge the more damaged the soul so there is a careful balancing act to consider."

Well, so much for that idea. Bad enough I have demons at my beck and call, I was not about to bring out any that could look human and alter people's minds. Maybe there were some that didn't look so obviously demonic?

"Malcanthet, you've mentioned several kinds of demons. How many kinds are there?"

"Well let's see, there's the Dretches, Yochlol, Sibriex, Balors-"

"You can stop," I interrupted. "Just based on the names of what your listing I don't think any of them will be what I need." Admittedly, I didn't actually know what any of those words meant but they sounded all...evilly so I figured none of the fiends looked like cute duckies and bunnies.

"If I may ask Mistress, what is it you need us for? Based on your questions and my summoning here, I assumed it was to infiltrate and take over this settlement, which I can assure you we would accomplish easily. But the look on your face implies that I am incorrect..." Malcanthet trailed off while looking at me with a chagrined expression on her face.

Right, the demons may obey me but they were still demons. Malcanthet had mentioned that they manipulated minds to gather souls, after all. They probably didn't have much in the way of morals, time to see what I could do about that.

"You said I'm The Abyss Given Form, correct?" I asked in as commanding a voice as I could muster.

"Of course Mistress!" Malcanthet immediately replied.

"And you'll follow my commands even if you don't understand them at the time?"

"It is not place to understand Mistress, merely obey!" Malcanthet said in the same tone a soldier would use when answering a drill sergeant.

"You'll follow my commands even if you disagree with them?"

"Even if a fiend did disagree, we would be foolish to disobey an order from you Mistress. As The Abyss Given Form you have the power to destroy any of us."

"Good, because I'm going to be a hero and help the people in this city."

The look on Malcanthet's face actually made me burst out laughing. I imagine she'd have the same expression on her face if I told her I was gonna flap my arms and fly to the Moon naked.

"That's...you want to...but," Malcanthet paused and composed herself. "You want to be a hero to the people living nearby? Surely it would be easier to just unleash several Succubi, we could use our powers to make everyone here adore you."

"You're right, it would be easier, but we aren't going to do that. In fact, my first order that I want you to pass down to every other demon is that no one is to use ANY mind altering powers on humans without my explicit permission from now on."

Malcanthet still had a puzzled expression on her face when she answered, "Very well Mistress. I shall pass along that order. Anything else?"

"No, that will be all for now. I shall call you again if I need anything."

"Certainly Mistress, I exist to serve." And with that Malcanthet disappeared. It wasn't like Alzrius from before, he vanished in an explosion of fire. Malcanthet's exited still involved fire but it was more subdued, like the embers of a flame dying out. I guess that fit with what I knew about them, he's a big important Demon Lord so he likes to make an exit. While Malcanthet's expertise consisted of spying and being in disguise so she was used to slipping away unseen. Or that could be a load of malarkey, maybe they just used two different spells to leave. I dunno, was still learning how this whole thing worked.

I should write down a list of things I wanted to learn and then call Malcanthet back and have her explain them to me. The wants, needs, and goals of demonkind perhaps? Maybe I should figure out what each kind of demon I had access to so I knew what I had to work with. Once that was done then I could figure out how to not make people run screaming for the hills when I went out in costume.

Ugh, a costume. I had no idea what I was gonna wear and I didn't think I'd get anything useful from Malcanthet in that regard, given what she was dressed in. I did not have the desire nor the body necessary to run around, fighting crime, nearly naked. While I wanted my costume to tie into my powers at least a little bit, I couldn't go too far with it or else I'd end up being mistaken for a villain. It was already going to happen just because of my powers, didn't need to help them out by looking super intimidating. Not that I really had a lot of options, wasn't like I could afford a professionally made costume, might have to settle for some old clothes and a mask for a while. What if I asked a demon (one that didn't specialized in seduction) for help they could get me a proper wardrobe?

Man, I thought trying to track down a cape was hard, being a cape was even tougher and I hadn't even gone out yet. Maybe I should just go take a nap, I had nearly exhausted myself at the library and then I came home to this...yea, naptime. Dad would wake me up for dinner when he got home.

As I climbed the stairs I couldn't help but noticed that despite how tired I was, I was happy. I was legitimately smiling, something I hadn't done in quite a while. Realizing just how long it had been since I'd been this happy did dampen my spirits a bit, but not much. I didn't know quite how I was going to do it, but I was going to be hero!

* * *

 **Author's Note:** _Taylor's minions will not have a copy-paste transition of their abilities from the game. Too many of them have powers that don't jive with their appearance thematically so I will be making alterations. In some cases this would be a nerf, in others it could be a buff, but whatever the case things won't magically be solved by an array of Wish spells._


	2. 1-2

I let out a grunt of pain as I landed awkwardly at the bottom of the stairs.

"Keep an eye on where you're walking Hebert, might seriously hurt yourself next time you trip," Sophia said with a sneer as she strode past me.

Other students walked past me by as I picked myself up, not one of them offered to help or asked if I was okay. I sighed as I trudged out of the school. It was my first day back at Winslow and the bullies had left me alone all day. Suppose it was too much to hope that they had given up entirely, they had just been playing it safe while teachers were near. Still, if I only had to deal with them right as school let out then things were looking up.

 _Why am I so adamant about becoming a hero when the people I would be saving won't even help a hurt gir-NO!_

I squashed that thought as soon as I realized that I'd had it. I wasn't like that, I was a good person. I was going to have a hard enough time being a hero when I was commanding an army of demons, I wasn't about to make things more difficult by pulling a Carrie on my school.

Still, at least I got to go home now. I was now looking forward to spending time alone in the house, not just because meant I didn't have to deal with the the girls, but because I got to hang out with my demons.

I had spent my time off talking to various different demons and I had determined that they each had different personalities, had likes and dislikes, and had goals and aspirations. With the exception of their appearances, they might as well be human. Sure, every single one that I had met had a casual disregard for human life on par with what I would expect from an Empire 88 member who was looking at a minority, but damn it, quite a few of them were downright personable. After a year and a half of not having any friends and my only real social interaction being with my dad, I was enjoying the fact that I had a group of people that actually wanted to talk to me. And yes I was going to call them people, calling them demons all the time demonized them.  
 _  
Hehehe demonized…wow I'm a dork._

* * *

"Dad! Are you home?" I called out as I walked in the front door to the house.

I didn't expect Dad to be here but I always checked before summoning in any of my creatures. There was no way I was going to let my father know what I could do. He would insist I join the Wards and I seriously doubted they'd let me use any of my fiends. Sure, a lot of what I could summon were terrifying monsters whose mere appearance would give most people nightmares, but they were also really cool. Some of them were frankly badass. There was no point joining a hero team if they weren't going to let me be a hero.

"I need Graz'zt, Alzrius, and Malcanthet in the kitchen," I spoke aloud as I entered said room.

With a familiar crackle of fire, the three demons appeared before me.

Malcanthet settled into a chair at the table. She had quickly picked up on the fact that I didn't like it when she acted all...like herself. I no longer got the impression that she was seconds away from seducing anything with a penis. Once she had changed that aspect of herself, we actually got along great. She was the demon I summoned the most. Sometimes I summoned her to learn more about my power, but oftentimes it was just for her company. A couple days ago I had lent her some of my mom's old novels, the steamy bodice rippers that I wasn't supposed to know about, and Malcanthet and I had had a big laugh as we talked about how silly they were while putting an old Triumvirate puzzle together. Heck, yesterday I had summoned her with the intent of learning more about the Abyss and while we did discuss that, we had somehow also spent the whole time braiding each other's hair. It had been stupidly, stereotypically girly, but it had been fun.

Alzrius didn't move from where he had appeared, sitting on the kitchen floor. He was just too big to do anything. At fifteen feet tall Alzrius would have put his head through my bedroom floor if he had attempted to stand. On the one hand, I knew he didn't like the situation, Alzrius was bombastic to a large degree and he felt the absurdity belittled him. But on the other hand, I knew he enjoyed feeling powerful and being so big that he could cause a lot of property damage just by standing up certainly accomplished that. At least he didn't let his fire grow out into wings, that would have burnt the house down.

Graz'zt, the Dark Prince, ruled three layers in the Abyss and had connections to entities on other planes. He looked remarkably human. He had dark grey skin, glowing yellow eyes, small horns, and six fingers on each hand, but that was about it as far as oddities to his appearance…unless you wanted to count the fact that Graz'zt was a full on, USDA certified, Grade A, **Beefcake**. I could have grated cheese on his abs and had him crack walnuts with his buttcheeks.

"So any new ideas what outfit I should wear?" I asked, sitting down at the table. Graz'zt, Malcanthet, and Alzrius each had their own ideas on what my costume should look like. None of which I totally agreed with but I figured that between the three of them we should be able to work something out.

"I still say you should get Graz'zt to find you a proper suit of plate armor, one that would intimidate all who would oppose you when you take to the battlefield," Alzrius rumbled.

"Yes, you already told me he knew people in Sigil that were the best at working with metal, that's why I started including him in the discussion in the first place. But seeing as how Dwiergus isn't here, then you know I'm not strong enough to stand up in a full suit of armor, let alone fight in it."

Dwiergus was a demon lord I hadn't worked up the nerve to meet yet. He was known as the Chrysalis Prince and named his realm Fleshforges. Evidently, he was the demonic equivalent of a biotinker. He specialized in augmenting current demons as well as creating new ones. While I had entertained the idea of letting him make a few alterations to my body, making my hips and breasts noticeable was all really, it was just idle fantasy. The thought of actually going through with that gave me full body shivers. And having him change around my muscle mass and strengthening my bones, that was just right out. I was too worried I'd wake up and find out he had done something else to me.

"I could get a light chainmail to be worn outside of your clothes Mistress," Graz'zt said in his suave tone of voice.

"But then the issue is what clothes does she wear underneath the chainmail? Appearances can be vital to success," Malcanthet said.

"The Succubus thinks appearances are important, allow me to show you my shocked face" Graz'zt deadpanned.

Graz'zt was always civil when he first arrived but his tongue could get sharp once he really got into an argument, and he and Malcanthet always argued.  
 _  
Though I could think of several better uses for his tongue, like on my-_

My cheeks immediately reddened as I realized where my thoughts had gone.  
 _  
Right, moving on, nothing to see here._

"Chainmail wouldn't do much to cover my face," I said while trying to look anywhere but at Graz'zt. "I'd still need a proper mask."

"You could do a combination," Malcanthet suggested. "A proper helmet to hide your face, chainmail over a shirt to cover your torso and arms, and plate leggings."

"Why not bring in Dwiergus?" Alzrius asked.

"Because I don't want him working on me yet, we went over this last time," I explained with some annoyance in my voice.

"Apologies Mistress, I didn't mean for you. I meant, why not bring in Dwiergus and have him make your armor?"

"He can do that?" I asked.

"His work is usually intended to be permanent, but I hear he's made removable grafts before. Dwiergus should be capable of making you an outfit," Malcanthet postulated.

I sat back in the chair and thought about it. Having a living costume would be really cool, probably be a one-of-a-kind disguise. I don't think even most biotinkers made themselves living costumes. But the problem was, there was no way it would look anything but creepy.

 _I summon demons, maybe I should just accept that not everyone was going to like me. Go for broke, do a full on scary costume and simply do enough good that my actions outweigh my appearance._

Not every hero had to be ultra wholesome like Glory Girl. I should be able to pull off the intense you-don't-want-to-break-the-law-around-me type persona. Then again, most of the people that gave off that vibe were vigilante heroes that tended to be wanted by the PRT due to their use of 'overly aggressive tactics' when apprehending criminals. This was a not insignificant problem. If people got too scared of me, if the PRT thought I was a danger to people, public opinion could turn against me. The more I learned about my power, the more I learned about the kind of minions I could summon, the less I wanted the Protectorate taking an interest in me.

 _Wait, did I refer to them as minions again? Damn it brain, I'm a hero, heroes don't have minions!_

"Alright, I'll bring him in so we can discuss possibilities," I said and then cleared my throat. "I need-"

"Mistress don't summon him here!" Malcanthet screeched, interrupting me.

"How dare you speak that way to Mistress Taylor! She is The Abyss Given Form!" Alzrius bellowed at her. "I will tear your head from your shoulders, should she give me permission!"

It was actually quite amusing to watch Alzrius shout and try to look intimidating while not moving lest he break something. I quickly banished the thought, didn't need to smile at a time like this, wouldn't help the situation.

"Hold on, no need for violence just yet," I chastised. "She may have had a perfectly good reason for doing that."

"Yes Mistress, I assure you I did. You see, Dwiergus is quite large, even larger than Alzrius. If you summoned him here, he would cause damage to this room and that would likely blow your cover as a...parahuman?" She said the last word hesitantly, of the few demons I summoned regularly, Malcanthet had made the most effort to learn and understand the rules of the world I lived in. She wasn't completed caught up, but she still had a better grasp of thing than I would have in her situation.

"Whoa really? That big? Damn, thank you Malcanthet. Good job." She preened at the praise I gave her.

"Okay let see, Dwiergus can change other demons' forms. Can he alter himself?" I wondered aloud.

"I've never heard of him doing that but it theoretically should be possible," Graz'zt answered.

"Let's give it a shot then. I need a Dwiergus in a form that's small enough to fit in this room without causing any damage."

* * *

That had turned out to be a productive meeting, once I had gotten over how Dwiergus looked. The best way I could describe him was as what would happen to a human corpse if you stuffed them full of animals to the point that it was almost about to explode. Dwiergus was about my height by was positively bloated as all sorts of….things writhed underneath his flesh. Occasionally the limb or wing of some creature would poke out, usually by tearing open a hole in the skin but occasionally they would use one of the body's natural orifices, like the mouth or the eye socket. I declined Dwiergus' offer of a demonstration of his 'work', even if the neighbor's dog did annoy me late at night with its barking. I also decided against asking Dwiergus how he felt about being so small, felt like that would be a foot-in-mouth moment.

Dwiergus had suggested that instead of making the outfit attach to my body like a temporary graft, he could design a whole new breed of demon that was supposed to be worn like clothing. That way I'd have the extra protection of a demon's toughness without worrying about it coming detached from me during a fight. Since he was the expert I told him to make a prototype and we could go from there.

After dismissing my four advisers I glanced at the clock, there was still enough time to add one more demon to my bestiary book. After Malcanthet had mentioned several kinds of fiends, I knew I would need a way to keep track of what they were and what they could do. So I had had her write down a list of every kind she could think of and I was, one at a time, summoning them in and interviewing them. I wrote everything down in a notebook that I kept hidden in the basement. Based on what Malcanthet had told me, as well as what the interviewees had said, it seemed that the only fiends I was able to summon in were those of the highest station, the Demon Lords. My power didn't seem to notice the rank and file. I hadn't yet tested to see if there was an upper limit to how many I could summon at once, wanted to work my way down the list first. Though I was discovering a problem in that several of the demons I summoned knew of demons that Malcanthet hadn't told me about, and I could summon them as well. How many Demon Lords were there? Would I ever reach the end of the list?

Given what I had just learned about how big certain kinds of fiends could get, maybe I should stop doing this in the house. Then again, I had found a work around with Dwiergus. I could keep this up if I was careful with my phrasing. Though what would happen if I requested someone that couldn't shrink their size down? Well I knew the next demon wasn't huge so I'd summon him in the basement, but after him I think I'll do the remainder of my testing out in the Boat Graveyard or in the Docks.

That decided, I made my way down the steps to retrieve my book before taking a seat at the bottom of the stairs. Really should have brought a decent chair down.

"I need Yeenoghu before me."

The first thing I noticed was the immediate stench. There wasn't a slow build up; it was fine one second and the next second I was dealing with something that stunk almost as bad as the locker. As I attempted to control my breathing and avoid throwing up my latest demon showed itself. He resembled a hyena that had learned to walk upright, but the proportions of his body were wrong. The legs seemed too short, the torso and neck were too long, and the head was too big. He stood around eight feet in height and in one of his hands he held a three-headed flail that looked like it probably weighed as much as I did.

"If you can do anything to get rid of that smell, do it now. Otherwise I'm probably gonna puke in which case you're cleaning it up."

Abruptly, the smell vanished as quickly as it came. I let out a deep breath and sucked some clean air.

"Alright, that's better. So I called you here as Yeenoghu, but if you have a name you'd prefer to be known as you can tell me, provided saying the word doesn't have any weird side effects."

Not all fiendish words caused changes to reality, I discovered. Some words, like whatever it was that referred to demons as a whole, had rather noticeable effects within a certain radius of the speaker: killing all small animals, raising or lowering the temperature, making water turn black, that sort of thing. Other words had more minor effects, I'm pretty sure the word Succubi call themselves makes men horny, because the word for Incubi had that effect on me. It wasn't like I felt like a dog in heat or anything serious, but since I was looking for an impact I did notice it. And then there were some words that had absolutely no effect whatsoever. Words for colors, for example. Still, I had learned to be very careful when asking for anything that wasn't spoken in English.

"Yeenoghu is fine, Mistress Taylor." Oddly enough, despite resembling a hyena his voice didn't have any hint of that trademark laughter you'd associate with the animal. If anything, he had a bit of a Cajun accent. "Though I hope you won't keep me for too long. Your reveal as The Abyss Given Form has caused quite a stir amongst the various lords in the Abyss and Baphomet has been making plans to invade my realm."

"Alright," I said as I jotted this down in my notebook. "I won't keep you too long, Yeenoghu. I'm just trying to get a sense for those under my command. What are you good at? What skills do you posses?"

* * *

Several days later, I was eating dinner with my dad. Conversation was stilted. After asking how school had gone and if things were better the conversation had kind of died. I knew that the locker was a bit of a wake-up call for my dad, it made him realize how little the two of us had really interacted since Mom died and I could tell he was trying to reconnect with me, but there just wasn't a lot to talk about. School was school. And my only friends weren't exactly the kind I could bring up to Dad but they occupied so much of my free time that not talking about them severely limited conversation topics.

As I finished off my spaghetti and meatballs in silence I felt a strange sensation in my head. Like someone was trying to get my attention by gentle, repetitive poking.

I tried to focus on the sensation to figure out what it was and I felt something suddenly give and a loud voice screamed out, "AH, MISTRESS TAYLOR. JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW I FINISHED CREATING THE DEMON FOR YOUR...COSTUME."

Needless to say, I jerked away at the noise and managed to fall onto the floor while my legs somehow ended up tangled in the chair legs and proceeded to pull it down on top of me.

"Taylor! Are you alright? What happened?" My dad exclaimed as he rushed over from his seat.

"I, uh, you didn't just hear anything?" I asked in confusion.

"What? No, it was quiet until you fell out of your chair. What was it you heard?" Dad asked in concern.

"Um, I'm not sure. It sounded like an explosion?" I hated lying to my dad but I wasn't about to tell him I was hearing voices in my head, even if it was a legitimate voice and not me going crazy. "Maybe it's a side effect from some of the medicine I'm still on?"

"I didn't think auditory hallucinations were a side effect of any of those but to be safe maybe we should go to the hospital."

"No, I don't think it's that serious," I assured him. "I think I'm gonna go lie down. If it's still going on tomorrow we can go."

"Alright, if you're sure."

"I am, thanks Dad."

I headed upstairs to my room. Once I sat down on my bed said aloud, "Okay, Dwiergus are you still there?"

"OF COURSE MISTRESS TAYLOR, YOU NEVER SEVERED THE LINK."

"Gaah" I clutched the sides of my head. "Why are you so loud? You almost outed me in front of my father."

"APOLOGIES MISTRESS, HOWEVER MY VOLUME IS OUTSIDE OF MY CONTROL. YOU DECIDE HOW LOUD I CAN SPEAK TO YOU."

"What? I do? What purpose is there for that? And more importantly, how do I do it?"

"WHILE I'M SURE SOME OF YOUR LESS KNOWLEDGEABLE SUBJECT WOULD CLAIM IT'S BECAUSE YOU ARE THE ABYSS GIVEN FORM AND LEAVE IT AT THAT, I IMAGINE THE REAL REASON IS SO YOU CAN STAY IN CONTACT, AND CARRY ON MULTIPLE CONVERSATION, WITH YOUR SUBJECTS. AS FOR HOW IT'S TO ACCOMPLISH YOUR GOAL, SIMPLY FOCUS YOUR WILL AND IT SHALL BE DONE."

"Okay, I guess that makes sense."

 _Focus Taylor, Dwiergus needs to be quieter. Soft voice. Normal volume. Not ear splitting shouting. Peaceful._

And then I felt something, it was like a window that had been left open was closed to a more reasonable amount.

"Dwiergus," I said, hesitantly. "Try it now."

"Very well Mistress. Have you figured it out?"

I sighed in relief. "Yes, you're much better now. Thank you."

"Certainly, now back to the reason I contacted you. I finished the demon you wanted. If you summon myself and Ivan, I will show you what I created."

"Eh, it will have to wait a few hours. My dad thinks I'm sleeping." I paused. "Malcanthet mentioned your size, how big are you really?"

"I believe I am approximately the size of one of the various buildings I saw surrounding your place of inhabitants."

"You're as big as a two story house?" I asked in shock.

"Affirmative, though Ivan is only slightly larger than yourself so you shouldn't have any problem summoning him."

"That's the second time you've mention Ivan, who is that?"

"The demon you asked me to create, of course."

"You named him? But I thought you were just making me living armor, sort of like a plant or something."

"Based on the sense of morality you displayed during our talk, I assumed you would want something to call him as opposed to 'Outfit'. Though I'm sure he won't mind if you tell him he doesn't get a name anymore."

I couldn't identify the tone of voice Dwiergus was using as he finished speaking to me. It was almost like he was searching for something, or trying to draw out a response from me.

"Wait, just how smart is Ivan? Dog intelligence? Is he as smart as you? Somewhere in the middle?"

Dwiergus chuckled. "No one is as smart as me Mistress, but I assure you that Ivan is quite intelligent. You can decide for yourself just how intelligent when you meet him. We shall eagerly await your summons."

* * *

Deciding to play it safe and not risk accidentally waking Dad up, I quietly exited the house and made my way to the Docks. I considered going all the way to the Boat Graveyard but decided that that was too far away for such a brief excursion. There were plenty of abandoned buildings at the Docks anyway, I should be able to find one I could use.

After walking for several blocks I finally came across one I could use. It looked like it used to be a warehouse but part of one side of the building had collapsed so the wind could blow right in. Seeing as how it was the middle of January in New England, I doubted I would stumble across any squatters.

Once I made my way into the building, and gave a quick look around to make sure I was hidden from view of the street, I called out, "Dwiergus and Ivan, appear before me."

There was a sound, similar to an explosion you'd hear in a movie, and then my entire field of vision was blocked. In front of me was a huge mass of limbs. Of the ones I was able to identify before they turned into a white soupy substance and transformed into some knew limb were eagle wings, a crocodile tail, several human arms of various skin tones, a tiger leg, a head that looked a lot like Graz'zt, and a squid tentacle that was longer than I was tall. I looked up and saw that several of the limbs were scraping the ceiling of this building. I was now especially glad that Malcanthet had warned me not to summon Dwiergus in the house.

"Mistress Taylor, so nice to see you while in my true form," Dwiergus' voice echoed as it came from all of his current heads.

"Wow Dwiergus, it's one thing to be told how big you are but until I saw you standing in front of me…" I trailed off. I just never expected to see a living creature this huge.

"I thank you for the compliment. Now, I believe you summoned us so that I could show you Ivan, yes?"

From behind Dwiergus' massive form came... _purple jello? Are those fruit slices in it?_ I cocked my head to the side as I looked at it. _Okay, it's not jello, doesn't hold its shape enough, but it's thicker than water. Like an ooze, really._ What I had mistaken for fruit slices were actually orange eyeballs, and they were scattered across the ooze's body.

"Greet-ings Mistress Tay-lor, I am...Ivan." It had the weirdest method of communication I had encountered yet. Ivan didn't have a mouth, the voice originated from bubbles popping in the ooze, which gave it a rather unusual cadence as sometimes all of the bubbles would pop and Ivan would have to pause for a split second while new ones formed.

"You're my costume?" I asked incredulously and turned to look at Dwiergus. "This is what you made for me?"

Dwiergus didn't respond to my questions, Ivan did. "Yes Mist-ress Taylor! I'll be a...good cost-ume."

Well damn, Ivan sounded so happy and sincere. Now I felt like a bit of a bitch.

"I guess I can try you out, how is this supposed to work exactly?"

"I shall explain everything while Ivan gets into position. Like I told you at your abode, the benefit of having a full demon cover you instead of merely grafting pieces onto you is that you can gain their defenses. Ivan is an ooze, I based him off of Juiblex actually. Have you met Juiblex yet?" At the shake of my head, Dwiergus continued untroubled. "It doesn't matter. The point is Ivan is incredibly difficult to harm. Whenever anything strikes him, he can simply move his body around the point of impact, distributing the force of the blow. With Ivan completely covering you, I'm confident you'll be impervious to most kinds of harm that your world can manage."

"If he's covering my face, how will I breath?" I asked as Ivan slithered behind me.

"Ivan has very fine control over his body. He can choose what will and won't pass through his body. He can actually alter his shape, Ivan doesn't even have to be a blob, that's just his default state."

Ivan began to work his way up my body. He was warm so it wasn't bad, actually it felt like my legs were in a mud bath.

"It's great that he can change his form, but won't it be a little cumbersome if we're in the middle of a fight and I have to tell him to turn our right arm into a shield?"

Dwiergus laughed. Coming from that many heads, it was a little disturbing. "Mistress, have some faith in me. I already planned for that. When Ivan is being worn, if you don't like what he's doing you can use your telepathy and just seize control."

I wasn't sure how I felt about being able to psychically control someone's body. Even if that someone could be mistaken for radioactive waste. Maybe I'd just wear Ivan and vocally tell him what to do, only seize control if I had his permission or if it was a life and death situation.

"Oh, one more thing. Once Ivan completely covers you, don't think of it as you wearing him because that's not exactly the case. The two of you merge together, there is no 'you' in there. I couldn't kill you by thrusting a spear straight through the middle, is what I'm getting at."

It took me a second to process what Dwiergus had just said.

"Hold up, I won't be in here anymore?" But I said it right as Ivan working his way up past my neck and onto my mouth so it came out as, "Hol uh, I woff be in er ahemoah?"

"I'm sorry Mistress, I didn't catch that." Dwiergus radiated amusement. "Please wait a moment while you and Ivan get used to each other and then try again."

With Ivan now covering my head, I couldn't see anything. It was like I was trying to look through extremely cloudy water. Dwiergus had said to wait so I closed my eyes and counted to ten. I opened my eyes, but everything looked the same. I tried to move my head so I could focus on Dwiergus but as soon as the thought entered my head that I wanted to look at him, Dwiergus suddenly appeared in my now clear vision. Though I could apparently see him from multiple heights, what the hell?

"What is...going on Dwier-gus?" As soon as I heard the words I stopped to think. How had I talked? Ivan was completed covering my head and the words hadn't come out garbled. In fact, they sounded a lot like Ivan had... _wait a minute_.

"Am I speak-ing and seeing…through Ivan?"

"Very good Mistress! You are adjusting even quicker than I anticipated. The key is to not think about Ivan doing what you want, but to simply do it."

"I'm not sure...I'm comfort-able with that."

Dwiergus made a noise that I understood to be a scoff. "You don't have to consciously think how to walk do you? When you get out of bed in the morning do you think 'lift the right leg, place right leg on the ground, now lift the left leg, place the left leg on the ground' or do you simple do it without thinking?"

Dwiergus made sense even if what he brought up wasn't what made me uncomfortable. In fact, I was already pretty comfortable with talking in this form. THAT made me uncomfortable. I didn't like the idea that I was so quickly becoming used to taking control of someone and using their body to my own ends. Though I will admit looking out of twenty eyeballs all pointed in different directions at the same time was neat.  
 _  
Did I really just use the word neat? What is this, the 1950's? Get it together Taylor._ I rolled my eyes. _Whoa!_ _Okay, when I roll my eyes they move where they are on my body, good to know._

"I advise you to spend a lot of time with Ivan, that way you'll learn how to pace your speech to plan around the formation of his bubbles. With enough practice he will be quite useful in a fight, I assure you."

"Alright, you did go...to all the trou-ble to make Ivan...so I might as well...test him out, find out the full...range of what he can do. I'll reserve...judgement...until then. But maybe start think-ing up a re-placement in case this...doesn't work out."

I felt a sudden urge of shame and disappointment. I was confused as to why until I realized it was Ivan. I had thought I would be in total control, and I was, but our connection wasn't exclusively a one way street it seemed.

Now I felt bad for forgetting that Ivan was here. He wanted to be a good costume and I was using him to tell Dwiergus I might want a new one already. Ugh, that felt like something Emma would do. I mentally assured Ivan he was a good costume. The response I got back could only be described as jubilation. Man, he was so earnest.

"Certainly Mistress, you mentioned you thought I would make you plant armor. Since I did base Ivan off of Juiblex maybe Zuggtmoy will be my next inspiration..." Dwiergus trailed off, already lost in thought.

"Well, you're free…to go back to…your home Dwier-gus. I'll contact you...if I have any ques-tions."

Dwiergus grunted in affirmation as he disappeared.

"Alright Ivan, I need to….practice speech so...I'll be talking while…we find out what…we can do."

* * *

As I crawled into bed I contemplated what a strange experience I had just had.

Wearing Ivan was not like I had been expecting. Back when Dwiergus had first told me his plan I had been assuming he would make me living power armor, that it would just strengthen my body's own movements. Once we had merged together though, I had thought it would be like two people inhabiting one body. I had discovered that wasn't quite the case. Ivan and I couldn't hold a conversation when I wore him. It was more like he was my conscience and I would get flashes of emotion from him. I could ignore him if I wanted to but the feeling would be there, in the back of my head.

There was also a couple of philosophical issues with what had happened. When I wore Ivan it wasn't like my body was hidden inside him somewhere, we merged and we were just goop. It was like I had been dissolved. But if my brain was no longer still a physical thing, how had I been thinking? Ivan had impressed regenerative capabilities but what part of Ivan's body held the part of me that thought? If that part got damaged and it regenerated would I still have my memories when it grew back? Or maybe there wasn't a specific part of Ivan's body that held my dissolved brain, maybe I was dispersed throughout all of him. But if that was the case, my question about memories still remained. Could I slowly lose my sense of self every time parts of Ivan were damaged?

Furthermore, how did I know the 'me' that Ivan revealed when I took him off was the same 'me' that had put him on? What if I was just a clone of the Taylor that Ivan had eaten? But then that prompted an additional question. If I was just a clone with Taylor's memories, did it matter? I could still telepathically contact and summon the Demon Lords so my powers worked even if I was a clone.

How did I know that Dwiergus and/or Ivan weren't mentally influencing me? Malcanthet had mentioned she and her succubi could charm people into liking them. If they were, would I even notice? I'd need to do constant introspection to see if I was different from the old me….but then, I'd already noticed that I was becoming different just from hanging out with demons, so how would I tell the difference from a change brought about by them being friendly as opposed to magical influence? Come to think of it, this level of introspection wasn't normal behavior for me anyway. Was I being paranoid because the demon's fear of betrayal was rubbing off on me, because the demon's were influencing my thoughts to make me suspicious of everyone so that they could try to manipulate me, or was it something else entirely?

 _Man, I was not used to thinking about this sort of thing. It'll drive a person nuts, being this paranoid…but it's not paranoia if everyone really is out to get you and I AM dealing with backstabbing demons…_

Okay brain, you are not going to get anywhere with that line of thought. Stop thinking so we can go to sleep.


	3. 1-3

I had finished up my assignment in Mrs. Knott's class early, like always, so I was free to browse the Internet until the end of the period. I was currently surfing through PHO to look up cape names.

I was torn. I had discovered the perfect cape name; it wasn't some generic word, it fit my theme, and was currently available. Lilith, the Queen of Demons and first wife of Adam (so the second part didn't make sense since I wasn't married, I could leave that out when introducing myself). The only problem was, the name only worked if I revealed the full extent of my powers.

I had spent the past month training with Ivan, practicing with his powers and not only was I having a lot of fun with it but I was discovering that for a glob of sentient snot, Ivan was really versatile. I was considering that maybe my reveal as a hero should just be myself wearing Ivan, not even bring up that I could summon demons. I felt like that would go over a lot better with…well, everyone. I mean, sure, I was still creepy when I merged with Ivan, but I didn't come off as evil. Nobody would look at Orcus and think hero.

 _But if I decided not to go with Lilith, what could I call myself?_

Trying to base it off of Ivan's form hadn't given me any good words. Slime, Ooze, Gunk, Mucus, Sludge, Goo, Scum. Those were all generic, gross, and stupid. They were the kind of names I expected a cape that belonged to the Merchants to have.

I had tried looking at variations of the color purple but those names were (somehow) even stupider. Mauve, Boysenberry, Plum, Periwinkle, Lilac, Sangria, Orchid, Mulberry. _Just ugh._ Not to mention, the closest color to Ivan's default shade was eggplant. I was not calling myself Eggplant, even if it was available.

I could go with something a bit more esoteric that didn't say anything about me. Anomaly, Eldritch, Farspawn, Peculiar, Abnormal, Strange, Aberration, Eccentric, Secret... _hmmm, those actually had potential. Are any taken? I could also add an article in front of them if needed._ Ms. Strange or The Eccentric sound a lot better than just the single words. I hummed to myself while I waited on the slow computer to load the necessary web-pages. Alright, Eldritch was taken by a fairly powerful villain in Europe so that's out. Secret was being used by two different thinkers, one was an independent in Florida and the other worked for the Protectorate in Alaska. All the others were available though.

This would require more thought.

* * *

"I'm sorry I haven't visited in awhile, a lot's been going in."

No response.

"I know that sounds like an excuse, because that's what it is. With everything that's happened I should have made it a point to come sooner but I just got so caught up in it all. For a little bit there, I thought things were looking up. I wanted to come tell you all about it, but then once I learned more I just got embarrassed and worried what you would think. Now? Now I don't know what to do."

I sighed.

"Lemme start at the beginning. After Emma, Madison, and Sophia pulled an especially nasty 'prank' on me that I'd rather not talk about, I discovered that I became a cape. My power is that I can summon demons from another dimension. They aren't illusions or anything; they are full on, living, breathing creatures. They are horrifically evil with absolutely no morals…and they're my friends.

I started ranting. "Do you have any idea what that's like? That the best social interaction I have in my life is with a demon that uses her powers to charm men into sleeping with her? A rapist! My best friend is a rapist. And none of the others are any better! Dwiergus thinks everyone is a lab rat to experiment on, Turaglas wants to eat **everything** , Yeenoghu likes to hunt and kill people for sport, Lazbral'thull's title is 'The Butcher' because of his fondness for torture, every last one of them is terrible!"

I collapsed on the ground, head in my hands. "But they're all nice to me. They want to make my life better. They offer advice, are willing to help me out."

I sniffled. "So anyway, I was in Mrs. Knott's class, looking up potential cape names, found some I liked. I was in a good mood, you know? As I was walking down the hallway to my next class Sophia opened a locker and caught me right in the face with the corner of the door, split my lip. It wasn't even her locker! I wasn't a deep cut so I was gonna just keep going to class when Emma showed up with her gaggle of followers."

I paused for a moment to catch my breath before resuming. "They did the usual stuff; insult my appearance, call me a weirdo nobody likes, yada yada. But then Emma commented on how my lip had started bleeding. She said if I was going to cut myself I was doing it wrong and that if I wanted to be with you so badly there were quicker ways to go about it."

I finally looked up from my hands to stare at my mother's gravestone.

"So I just left, walked out of school. Came here, needed someone to talk to that wouldn't come up with disgustingly creative ways to kill Emma and Sophia. Madison too I suppose, though I didn't see her today."

I pulled my legs together and rested my chin on my knees.

"I want to be a hero Mom. I **will** be a hero. I'm just worried that someday I'm going to get pushed too far and do something I can't take back. I'm not gonna lie and claim that I never imagined using my power to get revenge. One day I'd picture getting Orcus to stomp Emma beneath his feet or I might wonder how quickly Graz'zt could kill all three of them with his sword, but they're just little power fantasies, everyone has those. The problem is I have the ability to follow through with those thoughts, and I really don't want to do that."

"Another part of the problem is that the only people I hang out with now are my demons. I'm sure there is a sociological or psychological term for it, where you take on the values of the people you hang out with. Like if I hung out with a bunch of the Empire 88 guys at school I start developing a racist attitude. Well, hanging out with demons means I'm finding it harder and harder to justify not using my powers on my bullies, and that scares me Mom, it really terrifies me. What am I supposed to do? Do I stop hanging out with the only people who have been nice to me? Or do I cut them out of my life so that I don't hurt someone? Do I really have to be miserable to be moral?"

I really wished Mom could have said something back to me right at that moment but all I got was silence.

* * *

When Dwiergus had told me Ivan could alter his shape I had thought he meant in a general sense. Like, Ivan could stretch out his goop to form tendrils or could flatten himself to get through small spaces, and he could do those things. But if I focused I could make Ivan changed his shape to other things, like workable wings or hollowing myself out so that I could capture criminals. It took constant effort to prevent whatever shape I created from reverting back to ooze. The closest analogy I could think of was when you had a runny nose and would periodically suck the snot back in when it started to drip out. That was sadly, a pretty accurate comparison, I had checked in front of a mirror. It looked like I was slowly melting when I didn't 'suck' myself back into shape. As I got better at controlling Ivan, 'sucking' myself had mostly become second nature and I was usually doing it subconsciously. I was reasonably certain the my default state while wearing Ivan was no longer a pulsating mass of goop, it was now a humanoid pulsating mass of goop, so yea, progress.

Actually, as gross as I looked wearing Ivan, I had to admit it was an excellent disguise. Even my voice was different. I could have gone up to my own father and struck up a conversation and he wouldn't have known it was me.

I had discovered a limit with my ability to alter my form though. While I could change shape I couldn't change my texture. I could change color but that was about it, I was always slime, though I could change my density. Couldn't grow feathers or scales, couldn't make it look like I was wearing clothes, couldn't change my slime to feel like skin. Still, I felt that was a rather minor limitation considering what I was able to do. Case in point: flight.

With large wings extending from my back I was flying over the Docks, supposedly to see how long I could hold my form in place and to find out whether flying wore me out. In reality, I was flying to just fly. After the day I'd had I needed some stress relief so after Dad had gone to bed I summoned Ivan and was just enjoying the feeling of wind whipping across my form as I soared through the air. I couldn't help but wonder how often capes like Aegis or Alexandria flew just for the sheer enjoyment of it. Ivan seemed to be having just as much fun as I was based on the emotions I was sensing.

Then there was another ability I had discovered that Dwiergus hadn't even mentioned to me. While wearing Ivan I could alter my chemical compound somewhat. I hadn't played around with it too much because I wanted to get a hold of a Chemistry textbook first, but I had learned that I could spray out a fire suppressant after I had come across a fire extinguisher in a dumpster and sucked up what was left in the tank.

I noticed a commotion in a building below me so I swooped down and landed on a roof across the street. Glancing down, I saw a large group of asians running out of the building. They were of varying ages but all seemed surprisingly well dressed considering we were in the Docks in the middle of the night. Well, asians in the Docks meant the ABB was involved somehow, though almost none of the people down there looked like gang members.

While this was going on, two SUV's came screeching around the corner and pulled up to the building. The vehicle's doors opened and gang members poured out onto the street along with someone in a costume. This was not good, I recognized the guy, Oni Lee. His power was weird, he could teleport but when he did so he left clones of himself behind. From what I read online, he would often use his clones as suicide bombers and didn't care about who he caught in the blasts. I could hear him shouting but I was having trouble understanding him. Seemed like only every other word was in english, but I definitely caught the word 'kill' in there.

Right, I didn't know or care what was going on in that building but I wasn't about to stand by while Oni Lee killed somebody. I got a feeling of excited anticipation from Ivan, training was one thing but he was happy that we were finally doing something against real people. I just hoped I didn't throw up from nervousness.

 _Can I even throw up in this form?_

If I could, I most certainly did not want to see what it looked like.

A backed up a bit and then ran forward and jumped off the roof. I used my wings to angle myself towards Oni Lee and retracted them into my back as I landed next to him. Changing my right arm into a club, I swung it at his chest. However, as soon as the blow connected, Oni Lee's body crumbled to ash.

Some of the gang members started shouting, presumably about me.

Using the eyes strewn across my my body, I searched for Oni Lee. I didn't see him but I did see several men pointing guns at me. I focused, identifying each man who had a gun and then simultaneously shot goop into their eyes. I didn't know exactly what the chemical compound was composed of, but Ivan had created it after I fed him some pepper spray and leftover Indian food. Basically, not something you wanted on your face.

Predictably, the men I had slimed screamed. Most of them clutched their faces but two managed keep their focus and shot their guns at me. I felt several impacts against my body. It didn't hurt but I did have a minor mental freak out as I became aware of the bullets that now resided inside of me.

I double checked and assured myself that I wasn't injured, despite having been shot three times, just in time for Oni Lee to reappear. He had teleported behind me and it looked like he was intending to slit my throat with a freakishly long knife. Luckily, the eyes on my back saw Lee the moment he showed up so I built up a bit of force and then spit the three bullets out of my back, sending them straight through his left thigh. His only reaction was a slight grunt as he stabbed his knife into my neck and then pulled the pin of one of the grenade strapped to his chest

The explosion didn't hurt, though it was exceedingly disorienting. I could feel some of myself burn away in the heat but mostly my body absorbed the blast. I just kind of wobbled like jello that had been dropped on the floor. I mean, it was still an explosion so I wobbled a lot, but at the end of the day I had just survived a grenade blast at point blank range so I wasn't going to complain about that.

Oni Lee's body wasn't anywhere in sight so I guess he had teleported away. I had no idea if I had managed to injure him or not.

Deciding I needed to do something about the about the non-powered gang members that I hadn't slimed, I raised an arm up and let it grow until I had a tentacle of goop nearly fifteen feet long. I then spun it in a small circle to build a bit of momentum before I whipped it out and began turning my body to arc it around me. I kept my arm low to the ground so that if I accidentally hit anyone too hard I would only break their legs instead of killing them. At least nobody was pinwheeling in the air when I knocked them their legs out from under them, that was a good sign.

I completed my 360 degree turn and retracted my arm back into place with snap. Surveying the situation, I realized that anyone that was capable of it was in the process of fleeing. A few of the healthier gang members (ie, that ones that had been out of range of my arm) were helping their injured comrades. There were several people lying on the ground moaning, but everyone was basically moving away from myself and the building.

I wanted to dust my hands off and strike a pose. My first fight as a cape and I hadn't been injured! Sure, I'd been shot, but I hadn't been injured… _there's a sentence I didn't ever expect to use_. Even so, I had taken out several members of a gang and even fought another parahum- _crap!_

I'd gotten so wrapped up in congratulating myself that I wasn't keeping a lookout for Oni Lee!

I formed more eyes on my body so I could search every nook and cranny visible from where I was standing. I assumed a stance of readiness, prepared to counter Oni Lee's next attack when the front wall of the building I was standing in front of exploded outward. At first I thought Lee had suicide bombed somebody inside but I quickly realized that wasn't the case as three large...things leapt out at me. Considering who I hung out with, it seemed rude to call these things monsters but I didn't know what they were. They were the size of small cars and seemed to be just masses of muscle and bone. They also had people in costume sitting atop them who were glancing around frantically.

One of the riders, dressed in black leather and a motorcycle helmet spoke up, "What going on Tattletale? You said Oni Lee was out here!"

A blond in a skintight black and purple outfit answered him after a quick glance around. "He was, but ran off after getting injured by the newbie over there." As she said this she gestured at me. _How did she know I was a new cape?_

Motorcycle turned to look. I saw his body kind of jerk as he noticed me, guess I should start getting used to that reaction. He then made an overly dramatic throat clearing noise. "Right, well thanks for helping us out by getting rid of Lee. With his teleporting he would have been able to keep with us while we made our escape. Speaking of, we need to do that before Lung shows up. Do you need a ride?"

I shook my head as I shifted my arms into wings. I hadn't decided on where the best place to grow wings was so I kept switching back and forth, out of my back or replace my arms. If I was better at math I probably could have figured out the aerodynamics of it, but instead I just went with whichever I currently felt like.

Motorcycle nodded at me and the three beasts took off at a run. They pulled somewhat far ahead of me while I took to the air but once I found my rhythm in flight I was able to catch up and keep up. I admit I was surprised when the beasts revealed they could climb buildings. It was certainly an effective means of locomotion for the group. After travelling in a southwestern direction for a while we stopped on the roof of some apartment building.

Blond Girl hopped off her beast and began rubbing her thighs, guess she was saddle sore. "Good job guys, we got away clean from the ABB," she said.

"Yea, I wasn't looking forward to fighting Oni Lee. Who would have guessed we'd be rescued by somebody that looks like a loogie I hocked when I was sick last week," a guy in a renaissance faire style outfit said as he climbed down. He was promptly smacked across the back of his head by Blond Girl.

"Ignore him," Motorcycle said. "The rest of us already do."

Unsure of what to say I settled for nodding my head.

"I said it at the casino but I want to say it again, thanks for taking care of Oni Lee. We owe you one. I'm Grue by the way," Motorcy-Grue said. He paused for a second and then extended his hand.

If I had eyebrows at the moment they would have risen to the top of my head at Grue's offer. It takes a pretty unsqueamish person to offer a handshake to someone like me. Shifting my hand to get rid of the gunk, I reached out and gave a firm, but not crushing, handshake. When he let go my hand resumed its shape as a tendril of ooze.

"So, ah, introductions. As I said, I'm Grue. The asshole is Regent, Tattletale is the one who's undoubtedly grinning behind my back, and the leaves Bitch and her dogs." He leaned in a bit and whispered at me. "To be P.G. about it the Protectorate and the media tend to call her Hellhound but she hates that."

I looked over the group. Grue appeared to be waiting on me to speak. Tattletale was, in fact, smiling. Bitch was wearing what looked like a dollar store, plastic dog mask and I was still able to tell she was scowling at me. Regent seemed bored. The dogs (seriously, those were dogs? They looked more like something I would summon) seemed content to just sit there.

"Don't worry," Tattletale spoke up. "She's not being rude, Grue. She's just shy."

"That's a girl? Well damn, you guys said I'd sleep with anyone. We found the exception," Regent blurted out, earning another smack across the back of the head from Tattletale.

That stung more than it should have.

"I apologize on behalf of my teammate," Grue said in tone of long suffering. "Anyway, you got a name?"

"I've thought up….a couple of possibil-ities, but I haven't….settled on one yet."

Damn it, I had been practicing talking. I had gotten to the point that I shouldn't be pausing like that, waiting for bubbles to form. My nervousness at meeting a group of capes was throwing all that work out the window.

Said group of capes was staring at me.

"What?" I asked indignantly. "Pick-ing a good name is hard."

Regent waved his hands placatingly. "No no no no, we weren't staring at you because of that. We were staring because you just talked by blowing bubbles. In yourself. It was awesome."

The weird thing was, Regent sounded sincere when he said that. Felt strange to be getting compliments from a guy that seconds early had said he'd never sleep with me.

"You can shift your body around to grow wings, are you unable to grow a mouth and vocal cords to talk?" Grue asked.

 _Could I do that?_ Vocal cords seemed pretty complicated and I didn't know much about biology. Then again, I had figured out how to make wings that let me fly despite not knowing much about birds.

Rather than admitting I hadn't thought of it I said, "Vocal cords are hard."

Tattletale grinned even wider and opened her mouth like she was about to call me on my fib when her head whipped around to look off in some direction. "Heads up, we got Protectorate incoming."

The group quickly scrambled onto their dogs. As they took to leaping off the building I heard Tattletale shout out, "We'll be in touch!"

 _That went well,_ I thought to myself. _I had stopped Oni Lee from killing a group of heroooooes-wait._

The only independent heroes I knew about in Brockton Bay were New Wave who were all unmasked, and the group had left once Tattletale said the Protectorate was coming so they weren't Wards either. I replayed as much of the conversation as I could remember in my head.

 _Did...did I just help a group up villains rob an ABB casino?_

I facepalmed. Never mind that at the moment I didn't have a face or a palm, the situation was so dumb that it was the only possible thing I could do.

Bubble popped as I groaned in frustration while I walked to the edge of the building. Maybe when the Protectorate hero came to investigate the fight I could explain what happened.

While I was pondering how long before the authorities would arrive I saw a red blur streak down the road. After about thirty seconds I saw a PRT van drive past me, going in the same direction as the blur. Were they chasing down a speedy parahuman?

I altered my legs, lengthening and strengthening them. I changed their shape and where the joints were located. _Not like I had bones in this form but I'm still able to tell my ooze where I want my limbs to bend, weird._ Soon I was perfectly equipped for running along and leaping between rooftops. I admit I got the idea from the dogs the other capes were riding. Didn't want to fly everywhere all the time, even if it was fun, it was too conspicuous.

I squatted up and down a few times, getting a feel for my new legs. Once I was confident I wouldn't trip over my own feet I sprinted forward. Without bothering to judge the distance to the next building I leapt. One of the benefits of having a body completely made up of slime was that I didn't have to worry about being injured from falls. Regardless, I made the jump to the next apartment roof though I didn't stick the landing. Ended up falling forward and faceplanting into the gravel. I picked myself up and grimaced. I wasn't hurt but the longer it took me to get the hang of this the further ahead of me the PRT van would get.

I took a breath to focus myself and then ran forward, making sure to aim a bit higher in my jump this time. This gave me the extra second to position my legs properly when I came down on the next buildings roof. I was able to start running almost as soon as I'd landed. I was able to properly jump to, land on, and start running across the next building without a problem.  
 _  
I got the hang of this quick!_

I felt Ivan's happiness match my own.

Eventually, I made my way back to the same building I had used to spy on the ABB. Making sure to stay low so I wouldn't be seen, I crawled to the edge of the roof and peered down.

The red blur was zipping to and fro, crisscrossing the entire area. The PRT van had stopped in the middle of the street and the troopers were setting up a perimeter around the former gang hideout.

After several minutes the blur stopped what it was doing and ran up to one of the troopers. When it stopped I was finally able to identify it. It was Velocity, a Protectorate cape known for running fast.

Of course, who else could it have been? Why had I thought they were chasing him? They were clearly following him to the crime scene.

 _I am just not thinking clearly tonight._

I sighed and watched the PRT trooper talk to Velocity, though I couldn't hear what they were saying. I really should go down there and explain what happened, not like this day could get any worse.


	4. 1-4

"My patrol of the area didn't turn up any parahumans, though with the level of damage I'm seeing there were definitely some here," Velocity spoke. "As for the source of all the commotion, that would be the building over there. Abandoned factory turned into an underground casino by the ABB."

"You said no parahumans, did you run into any non-parahumans of interest?" Miss Militia asked. She and her van of PRT troopers had arrived at the scene just as I had quietly descended down a fire escape. Sounded like she getting a report from Velocity as the two superheroes stood on the sidewalk, just outside of the alleyway I was currently in.

"No gang members, saw a couple people that were probably customers of this place getting into their vehicles over that way," Velocity gestured in the direction. "Didn't seem worth it to try and haul them in for illegal gambling, charges wouldn't have stuck and that's not our jurisdiction anyway."

"True, but we could have asked them about the cape fight," Miss Militia said gently.

Velocity shook his head. "Nah. They weren't going to tell us which capes were fighting at the illegal venue they were at gambling in. Be too close to admitting to a crime."

"So no witnesses then, guess we'll have to rely on what evidence was left behind and deduction. You said there were definitely parahumans here, what makes you sure?"

"Well-" Velocity began before I decided to interrupted him.

"I'm a witness. I can tell you what…happened."

I had thought I'd been nervous when I met the unknown capes earlier, that was nothing compared to meeting people I knew to be heroes. Velocity and Miss Militia. But there was an additional layer of nervousness of top of that, I was about to confess to helping criminals. I really didn't want to go to jail over this. The two capes turned around to look at me. I couldn't help but notice Miss Militia's weapon had shifted around to tommy gun.

I then discovered something interesting about my physiology. Despite the fact that it took time to speak, I was still capable of blurting things out that I hadn't meant to say. "You aren't gonna attack me…are you?"

I noticed that caused a shift in both of the heroes' body language. There weren't many reasons why somebody would ask that question, and I inwardly cringed at what thoughts must be going through their heads. They were probably really suspicious of me now.

Miss Militia asked, "Why would you think we would attack you?"

I stepped forward so that the street lights were illuminating my form.

"Oh" slipped out of Velocity before Miss Militia elbowed him in the ribs. He quickly recovered. "Er, what I mean is just because you're a cape with an unusual appearance doesn't mean we'll attack you.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to…say it. I'm just ner-vous."

"It's alright," Miss Militia said reassuringly. "We aren't going to hurt you, I'm Miss Militia and this is Velocity. We're heroes with the local Protectorate Branch. We're like police officers that focus on protecting people from those with powers that would abuse them."

That was an odd way to introduce yourself. Why was she explaining things so simply? I wasn't a kindergartener. Did she think my slow speech pattern mean I was also slow mentally?

"I know who you both are." I let out a nervous chuckle and raised an arm. As I did so my stump shifted around until it resembled a hand pointing, which I aimed at Miss Militia. "I actually went as you…a couple years ago for Hallo-ween." I can't believe I just said that. The only way this could get more embarrassing was if Armsmaster showed up and I admitted that I used to have a pair of his themed underpants.

I saw Miss Militia's eyes widen, in surprise maybe, for a split second before they crinkled which I think meant she was smiling. "Do you have a cape name picked out? What should we call you for the rest of the conversation?" she asked kindly.

 _Ugh, people kept asking me that, I really needed to make a decision._

I moved my arm to run my hand through my hair but stopped when I realized that I didn't have any hair. "I haven't picked...one out yet. I had a coup-le ideas but couldn't…decide which one I like-d. Can I use…Abnormal as…a placeholder…until I make up my mind?"

"That works, just don't wait too long or the placeholder will probably become permanent. If not by the PRT then by the media or by posters on the PHO forums," Velocity said.

"Forum posters have come up...with cape names that...stuck?" I asked in surprise.

"Ever heard of Chubster?" Velocity was grinning when he said it. I couldn't tell if he was messing with me or not.

"So…" Miss Militia let it hang in the air for a second to let us realize we were getting off track. "You said you saw what happened?"

"I had a really…bad day so I decided to cheer my-self up by spending a few hours to-night playing around with my powers. I was travell-ing around the Docks when I spotted a bunch of pe-ople leaving the building in a real hurry. Figured I'd hang out…and see what was going on. That was when Oni Lee showed up."

Velocity and Miss Militia both seemed to lean forward at the mention of the duplicating parahuman.

"I couldn't make out every-thing he was saying, most of it wasn't english. But I could tell that he planned on killing somebody. Since I read online that Oni Lee likes to act like a suicide…bomber and that he didn't care about inn-ocent people getting caught in his blasts I jumped in to stop him."

Velocity started to say something, it sounded like a curse, but he caught himself. Miss Militia spoke instead. "You attacked Oni Lee? Your heart was in the right place but you have to know that he's extremely dangerous."

"Well yea, but that's what heroes do, right? Stop bad guys from…hurting people. I mean, I wasn't planning on being a hero this early. I'm still learn-ing the extent of my powers. But people were in danger and I couldn't just do…nothing."

"Alright, so you decided to go in to stop Oni Lee. How did that go?"

"Really well! He didn't hurt me…and I shot him three times in the leg with some bullets I er, uh…I got from some of the gang bangers' guns. After that he took off."

"You not only fought Oni Lee but you drove him off? Without getting injured? I'm impressed," Velocity said. And he sounded impressed too. I just got a genuine compliment from a hero, I wanted to preen.

"What happened then?" Miss Militia asked.

"After that some capes came out of the casino. I didn't think about it at the time but they were prob-ably robbing it. They thanked me for getting rid of…Oni Lee and then they left." I decided to leave out the part of me following them and then talking with them on the roof. _It's not lying really, I'm just not telling them frivolous information, yea that's it._

"What did the capes look like?"

"They rode three big do-monstrous things. The one who spoke to me was dressed in black with a skull motorcycle…helmet. There was also a blond chick in purple, a guy in a…renaissance outfit, and a girl in a dog mask."

"That sounds like Hellhound and Grue, I'm unfamiliar with the other two, " Velocity commented.

"That would be Tattletale and Regent. They're a new group called the Undersiders, tend to limit their crimes to smash and grabs, usually target other villains or suspected criminals, and always get away quick. Haven't done anything especially newsworthy for Brockton Bay yet," Miss Militia said.

 _A group of teenage capes repeatedly steal money from supervillians and don't get caught and that isn't newsworthy? Really? That says something about this city but I'm not sure what._

"So then what happened?"

"They left. I left too but decided to circle back when I saw Velocity and a PRT van go by."

With my story seemingly concluded, Velocity spoke. "Alright, thank you for telling us that Abnormal. You saved us a lot of trouble. I'm going to check with the troopers, see if they've found anything."

Miss Militia watched him go before turning back to me. "Well, now that that is out of the way, anything you wanted to talk about?"

"Er, what do you mean?"

Miss Militia gave a small shrug. "It's not every day I meet a new cape in this city, especially one with heroic tendencies. You stopped Oni Lee when you didn't have to involve yourself, have you considered joining the Wards?"

I wondered how she knew I was under eighteen.

It was my turn to shrug. "I deal with enough teenage BS at school. I use my powers….to get away from that."

When it became clear I wasn't going to elaborate Miss Militia spoke, "You don't have to join right away. You could stop by headquarters to meet the Wards to see if you'd get along with them. Or I could arrange for you to do some joint patrols with a Ward or two through the city if you would like."

I'd rather just avoid any government related capes for the time being but outright refusal would probably be a little suspicious. "The second one sounds doable."

Miss Militia's eyes crinkled again. _Yea, I'm thinking that must signify that she's smiling._

"Does this Saturday work? Gallant and Vista are starting a patrol at the south end of the Boardwalk at noon. You could meet up with them there."

It was late Thursday, or probably early Friday by now. That would give me a day to plan out how I was going to answer the questions that might come up about me or my powers.

"Saturday works."

* * *

As I flew home I reflected on the night I had had.

I'd fought Oni Lee and beat him. I talked with some villains and didn't fight them. I met two heroes of the Protectorate and they set up a play date for me with two Wards.

It could have gone better, could have gone worse, could have gone a **lot** worse.

There was no doubt in my mind that if I had let it slip to Miss Militia that I could summon self-aware, amoral demons that the night would have turned out very differently. She had probably assumed that Ivan was my powers but if I ever had Dwiergus make me a new suit that would raise a whole bunch of questions. I might be able to pass it off as Ivan's shapeshifting ability but that could come back to bite me if I got into a situation where I need to be able to change and no longer could. Plus if my new form wasn't eggplant-purple with a slime texture I'd have a hard time claiming I'd shifted into it.

It's funny, I had met one of my childhood heroes and I hadn't fangirled, hadn't put my foot in my mouth (with the one exception early on), but the thing I was most pleased with was that as the conversation had gone on I had managed to get my speech under control so I wasn't pausing as I waited on my bubbles to form.

I should ask Malcanthet for advice for how to handle the Wards. She was very good at manipulating people, she'd probably have a mulplite ideas as to how to steer the conversation away from dangerous topics. I'd do that tomorrow, maybe during lunch. Right now I needed to get home and go to sleep. I needed to be able to wake up in time for school.

* * *

I finished up the day's assignment in Mrs. Knott's class in just fifteen minutes (as usual) so I had the rest of the class to surf the Internet. I decided to check to see if there was anything online about the fight last night.

Only one of the local news sites had anything, just a short blurb about the PRT and Protectorate had been dispatched to the Docks to investigate a possible parahuman fight. I guess they hadn't given an official press release yet so the media wasn't going to report anything. Checking the Brockton Bay section of the PHO forums turned up two things. Evidently, someone had snagged a cell phone video of my fight with Oni Lee. It was from street level and pretty far away, I guess one of the guys that had fled from the casino had decided to stick around for a little while.

After spending far too long waiting for the video to load on Winslow's archaic computer, I watched it with a combination of dread and glee. I couldn't make out a ton of details at this distance but the part where I took out all the gang members with one sweep of my arm looked straight up awesome. The urge to poke the student next to me was strong, I really wanted to tell someone that that was me, to brag about what I had done. I managed to clamp down on that, quite frankly, ridiculously stupid urge. Did not need to out myself right after my debut.

Most of the comments were fairly positive. Oni Lee wasn't a popular villain so I was getting a lot of praise for fighting him but the conversation had quickly diverted from that topic to the far more interesting subject of everyone wondering who I was. I thought about posting something but realized two things: I still didn't have a cape name picked out and I was logged in on my real PHO account on a school computer during school hours, that would almost certainly be traced back to me.

After I read all the comments in that thread I clicked over to the second post that had turned up in my search. Oddly enough, it ended up being in the 'Connections' section of the forum.

 _Bubbles,_

 _Owe you one. Would like to repay the favor. Meet?_

 _Tt._

Huh, Tattletale had said they would be in touch when they left last night but I wasn't expecting them to use PHO as the method of communication. Though, now that I thought about it, how else would they have done it? I didn't own a cell phone, didn't have business cards like some capes, I wasn't summoned by the commissioner of the police via a spotlight on the roof.

Still, there was a chance this wasn't directed at me. I logged out of my PHO account and quickly created a new one with a bunch of fake information. I typed out a reply message.

 _Bubbles here, would like to meet but want proof you are Tt. Will reciprocate if needed._

I clicked over to some national news site in another tab and started reading an article about Endbringer cults when I saw I had already received a response.

 _Proof? We met after you got rid of the creepy guy that reminded me of a japanese demon. Last night you didn't talk until G asked your name. Good enough? Want to meet same place as last night? Does 3 work? School should be out by then._

Well that was fast, must have the PHO app on a smartphone. Based on the message I was as confident as I could be that this was Tattletale.

The comment about school gave me pause though. _Was Tattletale a high schooler?_ She was a supervillain that had robbed an ABB casino but she still had to worry about truancy? That just struck me as bizarre. Like if I found out Armsmaster had a part time job working as an auto-mechanic or something.

For supervillains they had seemed like nice people, so I guess it wouldn't hurt to at least see what they wanted. I quickly sent a reply message just as the bell signalling the end of class rang.

 _Works for me, see you then._

* * *

Climbing up a vertical wall by pulling myself along on my belly was an event I never thought I'd experience. I wasn't really on my stomach, my body shape at the moment was akin to a ball of pseudopods, but I perceived the part touching the wall as my torso so that's what it felt like. I got the idea when I came home from school and saw a slug climbing up the side of the house. It wasn't as quick as jumping but it was still fun to play around with and Ivan always liked it when I came up with new ideas to test.

As I approached the lip of the roof, I lashed out with one of my tendrils and grabbed onto the air conditioner that was mounted on top of the building and pulled my bulk up and over.

Standing by the stairwell were three teenager supervillians...sort of. From the neck up they looked exactly like they had last night, like professional capes. That image was ruined somewhat by the fact that now they were all in street clothes. It was a weird look.

"Hello," I burbled as I took a more humanoid shape. "Where's the other one?"

"Bitch isn't what I would call a 'people person' so we told her we'd handle this," Grue answered.

 _Man, without all the leather covering him up he's showing off some serious muscles. Not Graz'zt level muscle but still nice to look at._

"Nice to meet you…I still don't have a cape name though."

Grue nodded. "No worries, not a major sticking point."

"So should we just continue calling you Bubbles then?" Tattletale asked with a grin.

"Ugh, please don't. I told Miss Militia to call me Abnormal last night, let's just go with that."

I could tell from his body language that Regent was shocked. "You talked to Miss Militia last night?"

I shrugged. "Why wouldn't I? **I** didn't commit any crimes."

Regent seemed to think about it for a few seconds and then shrugged in agreement. "Okay, yeah good point."

"As to the reason we asked you here..." Grue trailed off and Tattletale picked up in his spot.

"We wanted to give you this as thanks for helping us out!"

Tattletale pulled a lunchbox from a book bag that had been resting at her feet. She held it out but didn't walk towards me. I think she wanted me to walk over to their side of the roof but these were supervillains so I was still going to play it safe. I stretched my arm out until I could take the lunchbox from her grasp.

"A early era Protectorate Alexandria lunchbox? Where did you get this? And how'd you know I was a fan?" I asked as my arm retracted.

Tattletale had a vulpine grin on her face. "I'm psychic, but that's not the point. Open it."

"No," I said firmly as I set the lunchbox down. "The only reason I came here was because you all were nice enough to me last night that I didn't want to be rude, but if you're going to lie to me I can just leave."

"What are you talking about?" Grue asked as he glanced at Tattletale while her face fell.

"She knows I'm not psychic...how does she-you've met a psychic and their powers didn't work on you!"

"Wait, seriously?" Regent asked. "You've met someone that could read minds?"

While I debated whether or not to answer him, Tattletale spoke up. "Alright, I'm sorry for lying to you. I'm not really psychic, my power is practically close enough that I like to pretend because it keeps people off balance. I won't go into the specifics right now but yea, I can't actually read anybody's mind."

Grue slapped the front of his helmet in lieu of a facepalm. "Damn it Tattletale, this was not how I wanted this to go."

"I know, sorry."

"Okay, let's start over. Can we do that?" When I nodded Grue continued. "Hi, I'm Grue, that's Tattletale who is not as smart as she likes to think she is, and that's Regent. We wanted to thank you for your help last night so there is a present inside the lunchbox. If you don't trust us enough to open it, we can talk to get to know one another a bit better, if you'd like."

"Well **you've** been straight with me, I'll open it." Rather than bend over and pick up the lunchbox I extended an arm from my leg to grab it, and then slide the arm up my body until it was in place to merge with my left arm.

I opened the lunchbox to see rolls of cash. I didn't know how much there was but there was more than I'd ever seen in person.

"A thousand dollars," Tattletale supplied.

Not filthy rich level money, but it was still a good chunk of change, especially to a teenager like me. I was honestly speechless.

"We knew there weren't any parahumans at the casino last night. We had planned to do a quick get-in-get-out scheme. But the guards put up more of a fight than we thought and that delayed us enough for Oni Lee to show up. He's not unbeatable if you plan for it, but we had planned to be out of there before he showed up…" Grue sounded embarrassed as he spoke, like it was a personal failing of his that things hadn't gone perfectly. "So you saved us from getting bogged down in a fight that might have gone on long enough that we might have still been there when the Protectorate showed up."

I finally found my voice. "So you're just giving me this stolen money, no strings attached, as a thank you?"

Grue shifted his stance uneasily. "It's stolen yes, but we stole it from criminals so it's not that bad."

"Anyway," Tattletale said. "We wanted to give you the money, exchange pleasantries, maybe get to know each other, and come to an agreement on what we're going to do going forward."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked as I noticed Grue and Regent were looking at Lisa oddly.

"Look, we're criminals. No denying that. But we're not bad guys. Lung, Oni Lee, Heartbreaker, those are the bad guys. We're just a group of people running around playing a high stakes game of cops and robbers. We don't seriously hurt people, we're just having fun, blowing off steam. And we're necessary!"

"Necessary?" I scoffed. "This I have to hear."

"Take a cape that just got his powers, doesn't matter how amazingingly strong those powers are, and throw him against an Endbringer. He's practically guaranteed to die. But if he had a chance to train, to use his powers in situations that required a lot of focus and effort, before going up against, say the Slaughterhouse 9, well now his odds are looking up. Not great, but better. We're providing a valuable service for the Wards and Protectorate. Free training."

It sounded like justification after the fact, but Tattletale said it was such conviction I almost wanted to believe her.

"You don't believe me, understandable. But then tell me this. Why is there a three strikes rule when it comes to most capes? Why are guy like Uber and Leet put in prisons that are easy to escape from rather than specially designed cells? It's because the good guys know all this too."

I knew there had to be a different explanation for what Tattletale was saying, but I couldn't think of it.

"Anyway, my point being, we're criminals but we aren't super duper Evil with a capital E. Meanwhile, you're someone that wants to be a hero. At some point in the future we're probably going to be on opposing sides in a dispute. We'd certainly prefer not to fight you so we wanted to see if we could come to some kind of agreement."

"You want me to ignore you guys when you commit crimes?" I asked incredulously.

"I didn't say that," Tattletale quickly countered. "I said come to some kind of agreement. Maybe we don't target certain parts of the city. Or maybe we stop what we're doing and run when you show up and you make it look like you're chasing us before we juuuuust manage to escape. I'm open to ideas."

"I'm not sure I'm comfortable with any of that…"

"Hey it's cool, we're not forcing you. Just trying to get along with a cape that's done right by us so far."

Damn, this would be so much easier if they were jerks about it. Now I felt a little bad.

"How long have you been a cape anyway, couple of months?"

"Yea, why?"

Tattletale pulled a piece of paper and a pen out from her bookbag and wrote something down. "Here, this is my phone number. Gimmie a call if you have any questions about cape stuff, I need to explain the unwritten rules to you at some point. Or if you just want someone to talk to. It'd be nice to hang out with another girl once in awhile."

"What, you don't like talking to Bitch?" Regent asked. I could practically hear his grin.

Tattletale stuck her tongue out at him.

"I'm sorry how this turned out," Grue said. And he did sound genuinely regretful. "Still, I'm glad we're at least leaving on pleasant terms?"

He ended the last sentence in a question, clearly leaving it open for me to agree or disagree. They had been nothing but honest up with me, outside of Tattletale's one lie.

I was hit with a rather uncomfortable epiphany. Considering some of **my** friends are 'super duper Evil with a capital E' it would be rather hypocritical of me to get too bent out of shape with these guys. Come to think of it, maybe hanging out with some comparatively normal (albeit criminal) people would do me some good.

"Yea, I'm not cool with you guys committing crimes or anything but I'm not going to report you. And I maybe wouldn't mind hanging out outside of costume….actually that reminds me, why did you guys show up like this? If all you wanted was to thank me, you could have done it looking at bit more...official."

The three villains glanced between one another uncomfortably before Tattletale spoke. "It was our way of showing you that we're being honest. We figured you wouldn't think this meeting was a trap if we were in our civvies. Less chance of us trying to fight you if we're not in costume, right?"

"Okay, I guess that makes sense." It didn't seem like the whole truth but I decided not to press the issue.

"So we don't have any plans the rest of the day-"

"Speak for yourself lady, I wanted to do a Mario Kart marathon when we went back."

"We don't have any **important** plans," Tattletale continued without pause. I was beginning to catch on to the group's dynamics. Regent was involved in a lot of teasing, either giving or receiving it, and it all seemed to be good natured. "Were you planning on leaving or did you want to join us for a trip around the Boardwalk? Probably just be window shopping and then get some food at Fugly Bob's."

I considered it but finally shook my head. "I appreciate it, but no. I wouldn't mind it...just not yet. I'm not ready."

Tattletale nodded. "It's fine, don't worry about. You've got my number, we can schedule a lunch date if you'd like, just us girls." She paused and then grinned at me. "Or I can bring the eye candy along, whichever."

Regent and Grue looked each other and then at Tattletale. If I had a face it would have turned red with embarrassment.

"Idon'tknowI'llcallyoulaterokaybye."

With that I jumped off the roof, making sure to aim for the drain hole cover by the sidewalk. Hopefully I wouldn't land with too loud of a splat.


	5. 1-X

"So, just to sum up: Oni Lee escaped, no gang members were arrested, the Undersiders escaped with most of the evidence, and the new parahuman decided not to join the Wards. Is that accurate?"

Hannah could see Robin wince when Director Piggot mentioned the lack of arrests. She had tried to warn him on the scene about this, but he had been dismissive. However, that wasn't the important part of Piggot's summation.

"Actually, that is not accurate Director," Hannah corrected. "Abnormal didn't want to join the Wards because she didn't want to deal with quote, 'teenage BS.' I got here to agree to a joint patrol with Vista and Gallant on Saturday. I feel that once she meets the Wards and learns more about them she'll become more inclined to join."

"Until she meets Shadow Stalker," Robin muttered under his breath.

"Velocity brings up a very good point," Piggot said. "As abrasive as Shadow Stalker is, we don't want her running into a potential Ward. See if Vista or Gallant can find out where and when Abnormal is likely to patrol. If they manage that then get Aegis to plan out Shadow Stalker's patrols so that there is as little chance of them meeting as possible."

"His patrol with Kid Win should have just ended. I'll go talk to him now, if the meeting is finished?"

"Yes, I believe we've covered everything."

Hannah and Robin got out of their chairs and exited the room together.

"You really going to do all that stuff Piggot wanted to recruit the Abnormal girl?"

"Why wouldn't I?"

"Just seems a little underhanded to me. Manipulating her into joining the Wards and only then letting her meet Shadow Stalker."

Hannah frowned. "I'd hope you'd know me better than that, Robin. There's a difference between manipulating someone and trying to make a good first impression. I'm not going to lie to the girl and I'm certainly not going to trick her into joining the Wards. I promise, I will make sure Abnormal meets and spends time with all the Wards before any paperwork is signed."

"You're right, sorry. I'm just in a mood after that meeting. Reminds me too much of dressing downs from my time in the military."

Hannah nodded in understanding as Robin used his speed to zip off down the hall. She didn't know the whole story but she knew that Robin had triggered due to depression while he served in the army. Anything that reminded him of that time was bound to put him in a bad headspace.

Hannah made her way across the PRT building to where the Wards were headquartered. When she approached the common room door she leaned down so that the scanner could see her iris. Once the scan finished she straightened up and waited for the door to open.

With a ding, the doors opened. Hannah looked around the common room. Gallant and Aegis were at the couch, in the process of rising to their feet as Hannah entered the room. Those two were such gentlemen. Hannah could see Kid Win was lying on his bed in his room, laptop on his chest, with the door propped open. He gave a brief wave at Hannah but otherwise remained focused on his computer. Vista was as at the communal computer with the PHO website pulled up, she gave Hannah a nod and a hello but didn't entirely take her eyes off the computer screen.

"Hello everyone, I'm here to inform you about a new parahuman Velocity and I met last night."

That got all of their attention. Kid Win came out of his room and Vista spun the chair around.

"How important is this? Should I contact Clockblocker and Shadow Stalker and have them come in? Aegis asked.

"That won't be necessary. For the moment, Gallant and Vista are the one's I wanted to make sure to talk to. Though you'll also have some work to do, Aegis."

"Sure thing Miss Militia, what do we need to know?" Gallant asked.

"Well as you made have heard, last night Velocity and I were dispatched to the Docks after we got several calls about a group of capes attacking a building. Turns out it was the Undersides and they were raiding an ABB casino."

Kid Win whistled. "Damn, stealing from Lung? That takes chutzpah."

"Lung was, thankfully, not there. However, Oni Lee was."

All the Wards winced.

Hannah continued. "The only reason we know so much is because a new cape saw all this going on and she was worried Lee would inadvertently, or intentionally, kill someone. So the she decided to fight him."

"How'd it turn out?" Vista asked hesitantly, clearing worrying about the answer.

"Amazingly well. The cape, who introduced herself as Abnormal but isn't sure if she wants to keep the name, appears to be a Changer with a Brute rating. She drove Oni Lee off and wasn't even injured in the fight."

"Sounds like she'd be a boon to the team," Aegis said. "That is why you're talking to us, right? Because she'll be joining the Wards?"

"She turned down the Wards when I suggested it. Based on her comments, I think Abnormal views her powers as an escape from a bad social life. She didn't want to commit to a team only to find out after the fact that she didn't get along with her teammates. However, I did get her to agree to a joint patrol with Gallant and Vista tomorrow."

"So you want us to feel her out, try to get to know her?" Gallant asked.

"Yes, just be yourselves and I'm sure she will come around," Hannah paused and then said a bit more seriously. "Just don't push her too hard, anyone that can take on Oni Lee is not someone you want to upset."

"No ma'am, if she doesn't want to talk about something we will change the subject," Vista agreed.

"Good, which brings me to my next point. I mentioned she was a Changer. She looks like, well..." Hannah scratched her head as she tried to think how to phrase it. "She looks like her body has been made of purple play-doh that had been left in the sun and was halfway through melting."

"...say what?" Kid Win asked.

"Her body was made out of some kind of thick slime or ooze. The viscosity was similar to mud, but she could change it. When she first approached Velocity and I her arms ended in stumps but during the conversation she was able create a hand with fingers."

"Alright, that's not too bad for Case 53." Aegis said.

"She's not a Case 53. She remembers her life and knew who I was. That's why I suspect her Changer ability is a lot more advanced than she let on, it would have to be in order to blend in normally."

"That could be worrisome," Kid Win commented. "Are you thinking she deserves a Stranger rating?"

"Right now that doesn't matter," Gallant answered before Hannah could. "We're trying to befriend her, not assign a threat rating."

"That's right. Two more things I wanted to mention so it doesn't catch you off guard when you meet her. In addition to the aforementioned oddity about her body, she was covered in orange eyeballs, so try not to stare at her because she's very likely to notice it."

"That would actually be really handy in a fight, especially against a teleporter like Oni Lee," Aegis mused aloud.

"This last bit of information needs to be handled a bit more carefully. I don't want Clockblocker finding out about it at the wrong time." Hannah pinched the bridge of her nose, just imagining all the things Dennis would do. "Abnormal doesn't have a mouth, she speaks by forming bubbles in her body and when they pop sounds come out."

The Wards all paused as they considered that.

"Yea, I can totally see Clockblocker thinking up all sorts of jokes as soon as he hears that," Vista admitted.

"Exactly, so I don't want him finding out right now. However, I also don't want him to discover this when he first meets Abnormal because he won't be able to stay quiet and I don't know how she'll react. Aegis, it will be on you to find the best time to bring him up to speed."

The leader of the Wards nodded.

"Also, Gallant, Vista. If possible, I would like you to see if you can find out a bit more about Abnormal's patrol pattern. If you do, tell it to Aegis so that he can plan Shadow Stalker's patrols so that they don't coincide with with Abnormal's."

"If she's new to this I doubt she has any sort of patrol route planned out," Gallant said skeptically.

"You are more than likely correct, but that doesn't mean we still shouldn't try to put our best foot forward which means make sure she meets capes that will put effort into being pleasant. I'm not expecting her to agree to join the Wards after one meeting but I would like it if she at least sees us as friendly faces."

* * *

"Do you think she'll show up?"

Gallant smiled. "I had planned on waiting ten minutes extra before starting in case she shows up late and we're still fifteen minutes early so we've got nearly a half hour before we need to start worrying about whether or not Abnormal will show up. Relax Vista."

The two Wards were at the south end of the Boardwalk. Their tour was going to take them in a northern direction until they passed through the Market and reached the edge of the Dock where they would skirt the edge of the Trainyard and travel west until they reached the city limits or their patrol time ended, whichever was first.

Missy was practically bouncing from foot to foot as she spoke. "I know, I'm just excited. If this goes well we could get an actual girl on the team for me to talk to!"

"Shadow Stalker is a girl Vista."

Missy waved her arm dismissively. "Pffft, she doesn't count and you know it."

Gallant seemed about to argue the point when a voice spoke out from below them.

"Not to interrupt your conversation but I feel like I should let you know I'm here so you don't accuse me of eavesdropping."

Missy and Gallant looked down at their feet. The sewer grate they were standing on top of was covering a bubbling purple mass of, well, ooze. Missy could see orange eyes staring up at them. At least, she assumed the eyes were looking at them, it was hard to tell since they seemed to be just kind of floating on top of the ooze.

"Abnormal?" Gallant asked, though Missy knew he knew the answer. Wasn't like there was a lot of purple slime based capes in Brockton Bay.

"That's my name, at least until I come up with a better one."

"Okay, so...um." Missy was at a loss for words. How do you strike up a conversation with someone that arrived via the sewer?

"If you both could just stake a step back, I'll come up there."

Missy and Gallant complied with the request, walking off the sewer grate. Once that was done Abnormal flowed upward, slowly building up her form until a more-or-less female shaped body of ooze stood in front of them.

"So now that I'm not staring at the bottom of your feet: hello."

Missy noted that Abnormal did have a mouth, sort of. She had a slit on her head that opened and closed mostly in time with her speaking, like it was being operated by a puppeteer. It looked like bubbles were forming in the mouth and that was where her voice was coming from.

Gallant strode forward with a smile on his face and arm extended. "Hello, I'm Gallant. Miss Militia told us a bit about you. She said you didn't have a mouth but you do now, I take it that means you're still learning about your Changer power?"

Missy envied Gallant's ability to ignore the girl's appearance. Sure, Miss Militia had warned them that Abnormal was odd and sure, Missy wanted to get to know a fellow female superhero that wasn't Shadow Stalker, but it was different when the six foot tall cape made out of ooze and eyeballs was actually standing right there in front of you.

Missy shook herself from her stupor and decided to suck it up and take the plunge. She walked forward as Gallant and Abnormal finished shaking hands. "Hello, I'm Vista," she said, reaching out her hand while trying not to grimace.

"Hello Vista, nice to meet you." Abnormal sounded nice. There didn't seem to be any mocking or sarcasm in her voice like some superheroes had when meeting Missy. Just because she was thirteen didn't mean she didn't work as hard as everyone else!

Missy also noticed her glove wasn't sticky when they stopped the handshake. Abnormal kept all of herself in herself.

"So before we start our patrol, any questions?" Gallant asked.

Abnormal tapped her chin with the hand that she still had. "Just the logistics of how this is going to work."

"Well usually when we patrol we try to keep within shouting distance of each other, even though we communicate via our headsets. Which reminds me…." Gallant pulled a standard PRT earpiece from a compartment in his armor. "This is yours for the duration of the patrol, it's already on the right channel and everything. Just put it in...uh, whatever it is you use to hear I guess. It's supposed to pick up your voice but that's assuming it's a normal distance from you mouth…."

"Don't worry, it's fine," Abnormal said as she took the earpiece and stuck it to the side of her head. It didn't get absorbed it but it did stay in place. Missy couldn't help but wonder what degree of control Abnormal had over herself.

"Anyway, like I was saying, we try to keep within shouting distance of each other. Usually one person is on rooftops while the other is street level. Our current route will take us along the Boardwalk and then up through the Market."

"I can't imagine you stop much crime on the Boardwalk" Abnormal said as she tilted her head.

"We're only teenagers. We aren't supposed to be stopping crime all the time," Gallant explained. "The PRT likes the Wards to be approachable, it reassures people that we're still normal kids under our costumes and not child soldiers. So yea, the first part of the patrol will primarily be signing autographs and taking pictures."

"You can stay on the rooftops with me if you'd like," Missy offered. "Gallant can handle dealing with the public, that let's us talk about the more serious aspects of superheroing."

Abnormal was silent for a moment and then shrugged. "Alright, you two are the experts. I'm just along for the ride."

* * *

"-so she looks at him and goes, 'Hey, these aren't buoys!'" Missy said, barely able to keep herself from screwing up the punchline of the joke by giggling.

Abnormal was a bit less reserved. She threw her head back and laughed, which was a bit weird to watch. When a normal person laughed they tilted their head back via their neck, when Abnormal did it she widened the split of her mouth so the bottom half of her head stayed in the same spot while the top half bouncing on a hinge.

"Clockblocker told that joke to Aegis, one of his few good ones. Neither one of them knew I could overhear them or they never would have finished it."

"I suppose they figure you are a bit young for those sorts of jokes."

Missy puffed out her basically non-existent chest. It didn't compare to Abnormal's much more noticeable bust but Missy had to work with what she had. "Hey, don't you start on that too! I may be young but I've been a member of the Wards longer than anyone else on the team."

Abnormal held up her hands, well okay her tendrils, in a placating manner. "I was just making an observation, wasn't planning on treating you any differently."

"Sorry, I'm just sick of having to put up with that."

"It's alright, everyone has things they are tired of dealing with. You're just lucky yours is a relatively harmless topic."

Missy knew that if it had been Gallant that Abnormal had said that to, he'd have been able to steer the conversation so that Abnormal would reveal more about herself and what the meaning behind that statement had been. He was good at dealing with people like that.

"I know, you're right. The other Wards only treat me like that because they care," Vista decided to take a gamble and open up a bit more than normal. "And as annoying as it is, it's still better than going home and dealing with that whole situation."

Abnormal nodded. "Yea, my home life...isn't terrible but it's a vast improvement over what I have to put up with at school."

"So I know you already turned Miss Militia down but I thought you should know that if you joined the Wards you could transfer to any school in the city."

Abnormal appeared to think about it briefly before shaking her head.

Missy spoke before she had the chance to say anything. "It's fine, I'm not going to ask for your reasons. So far you and I have gotten along so it'd be nice if you joined, we'd get to go on patrol more often, but I understand that the Wards aren't for everybody." Vista leaned over the edge of the building to where Gallant had been posing for photos with a group of little kids. "Well Gallant is still living up to his name, want to scout forward for a bit?"

Instead of answering, Abnormal's upper body stretched and grew. It arched up, across the alleyway and touched down on the roof of the next building. The part of Abnormal's body that was still next to Missy lifted off from the roof as it shrank into itself across the alley until Abnormal reformed herself over there.

The way Abnormal altered herself reminded Missy of her own powers; they way she could warp, twist, extend, and shrink space was quite similar to what Abnormal did with her ooze.

Missy temporarily collapsed the distance between the buildings and stepped over the alleyway before letting the space snap back to normal.

"First Miss Militia, now you. Can I expect Gallant to try and recruit me too before the patrol is finished?" Abnormal asked suspiciously as they walked across the roof.

"Well, um...probably."

Abnormal was silent for a moment before finally speaking in a soft voice. "I'm just not used to the idea that someone would want me as part of their group without there being an ulterior motive."

Missy grimaced internally. There was a motive beyond just getting a new teammate but she wasn't supposed to admit to that. Then again, Abnormal was already suspicious, maybe being honest would calm her down.

"Piggy, er, Director Piggot doesn't like the idea of someone that can fight Oni Lee without getting injured wandering around the city unchecked. I think she's afraid you'll join, or be forced to join, a gang. Gallant and I were told to try and get you into the Wards." Missy smiled conspiratorially. "But I've brought it up, you've said no, so I can honestly report back that I tried and you still didn't want to."

All of Abnormal's eyes turned to focus on Missy, it was unsettling but she held the smile on her face and waited for Abnormal to speak.

Her determination was rewarded when Abnormal finally nodded. "I'm not saying I'll always say no. Just...I'm not ready to join the Wards right now. I need to figure some things out first."

"That's fine, there is plenty of other stuff we can talk about." Missy did a quick scan of her surroundings and then did a spacial decompression so the two girls could hop over to the next building. "For example, are there any cute boys that you like?"

Abnormal snorted. It had a lot of force behind it since it caused all the bubbles in her mouth to pop at once. "There are some good looking guys at school but it's not like any have been nice to me." Abnormal paused as if suddenly remembering something. "Actually there is one guy, I wouldn't call him cute though. More like smolderingly handsome. He's been nothing but polite and amicable since we met, which is kinda surprising since he is….well let's say he's not a good person and leave it at that."

"Do you have a crush on a gang member?" Missy asked with a gasp.

Abnormal chuckled. "No, he isn't in a gang. He's too...sophisticated I guess would be the right word, to put up with the petty stuff gang members get into."

"You said he isn't a good person but if he hates the gangs he can't be all bad."

"A step above Nazi's isn't saying much."

"Point," Miss conceded. "You'll just have to tell more about this guy. We'll figure out a plan to get you on a date with this guy so long as he isn't too terrible." As the words left her mouth Missy realized how forward she was being. "Uh, that is if you feel comfortable telling me that much about your secret identity! You don't have to if you don't want to!"

* * *

"Report," Emily Piggot ordered to the two Wards standing in front of her desk. "How'd the patrol go?"

Armsmaster was silent from where he was seated. He and Emily had been finishing up a budgetary discussion when Gallant and Vista had come back in from patrol.

"Well we haven't gotten the chance to write up an AAR yet-" Gallant said before Emily interrupted him.

"You know what I mean Gallant. I don't care about whatever petty thieves you stopped. I want to know how things went with Abnormal."

Vista spoke up, "She's really nice, already have another patrol planned out for Friday. We talked about a lot of stuff while Gallant was walking the Boardwalk. But ah….well…."

It was like pulling teeth when dealing with these children. "Spit it out Vista, what's the problem?"

"Abnormal doesn't want to be a part of the Wards. I almost think she's expecting us to stab her in the back if she joins."

"That supports the impression I got from her when I was walking with her for the second half of the patrol," Gallant agreed. "While she struck me as a generally good person, she has severe trust issues. I'm guessing somebody she was close to screwed her over, might have even caused her trigger."

Emily rubbed her forehead. That certainly made things difficult. "Any ideas as to the source? Parent? Think we're looking at an abuse scenario?"

Vista shook her head. "I'm not sure that's the case. From what she told me, while she isn't happy at home, her biggest issues seem to deal with school. I don't think she has any friends there."

"Hmm, well if that's all then just continuing doing patrols with her should work out, repetition will wear her down. If she's as moral as Gallant said she'll join us eventually. After all, we're her only option."

Judging from the expression on both Gallant's and Vista's faces, there was some other problem that hadn't been brought up yet.

The two Wards glanced at one another before Gallant spoke. "There was another thing I picked up from Abnormal, separate to her fear of betrayal. She exuded a good deal of fear and guilt when she and I were discussing the oversight of the Wards."

"Meaning?" Emily asked.

"She's worried we-" Gallant motioned at himself and Vista, "-will betray her but she's scared of you." Gallant gestured at Emily and Armsmaster.

Emil leaned back in her chair. "Scared of authority figures while worrying about betrayal from her peers? That sounds like someone who has something to hide. I'm unaware of any recent crimes involving an unknown parahuman though, Armsmaster?"

The armored superhero shook his head.

"There's no guarantee she broke any laws," Vista protested. "And even if she did, there are extenuating circumstances for trigger events."

Emily narrowed her eyes. "Do you _know_ it was a trigger event?"

"I don't," Vista said nervously. "But if whatever she is scared of you learning had occurred multiple times, someone would have heard about it by now, right? So it would make sense for it to be a one-time thing, right?"

"You're making excuses."

"Maybe, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong!"

Emily stared at Vista, considering her words.

"Very well, she hasn't broken any laws yet so we aren't going to arrest her but this does mean we need to watch her closely. Continue to be a friendly face for her. While I want to find out what it is she's hiding, don't push it if she's trying to avoid the subject. We can bring it up when she signs the Ward's paperwork."

"There could be a slight problem with that, a tiny one, minuscule really. Barely an issue, just a theory if I'm being honest."

It took more effort than it should have for Emily not to shout at Vista. The girl was usually more mature than this and Emily had a lot of work to do. "Vista, you're babbling. Out with it."

"I'm just guessing here…and I could be wrong so don't hold me to it," Vista paused and her mouth twisted into a frown. "But I think Abnormal has a crush on a new supervillain."

"What?" Armsmaster finally decided to involve himself in the conversation. "Which one? And what do you mean 'new supervillain'? I wasn't aware of any new ones in the city."

"At first I thought she was talking about some good looking guy at her school but she said he was quite a bit older than her and that he wasn't in a gang. She mentioned he and some people from wherever he was from were helping her with training, so he's not from around here. She didn't say training for what though so maybe she meant…musical instruments?"

Emily affixed Vista with a glare but didn't say anything.

"Abnormal said that he wasn't a very good person but I'm worried that since I'm a superhero that the assumption is automatically supervillain," Vista said timidly. "She could have just meant that he was a racist or something."

It sounded like Vista was trying to convince herself of Abnormal's innocence as much as she was Emily.

"Do you really believe that or are you saying this because you like her?" Emily asked, already knowing the answer.

When Vista failed to answer Gallant spoke. "I just want to reiterate, based on my talks with her, Abnormal wants to be seen as a hero. I don't believe that she would associate with a supervillain."

"What if Abnormal was socially isolated at school, had a crappy home life, triggered due to someone she was close to abusing her trust, and then a supervillain decided to be nice to her?" Emily asked sharply. "Would she then, once she met the proper authorities, start feeling guilt and fear because she was torn between her morals and her teenage crush?"

Gallant's silence was answer enough.

"This explains too much. We no longer have the option of a wait-and-see approach. You _will_ find out more about this crush of hers on the next patrol or she will be brought in for questioning. I'll check with the other nearby Directors, see if any of their villains have decided to skip town recently. You two have an hour to write up your AAR's, after that we'll all be meeting to perform Abnormal's threat assessment. Dismissed."


	6. 1-5

It was a relatively warm afternoon. It was still cold outside, but considering it was winter in New England, the fact that I was only wearing a light jacket meant it was relatively warm. I was sitting on a bench on the edge of the Boardwalk, trying to work up the nerve to go into the restaurant Tattletale and I had agreed to meet at. It was some fancy pizzeria, I remember hearing about how their oven was made from stone that had been flown in from a mountain in Italy because the owner wanted to be able to cook Italian food authentically. I had never eaten there, it was just one of those places that my mind didn't even allow myself to consider as an option, too expensive. I really hoped Tattletale was planning on picking up the check because this was not how I wanted to start spending the thousand dollars she had given me.

Talking to Tattletale, Lisa, when she wasn't in costume was no big deal. Talking to her on the phone when I wasn't in Ivan, also not a problem. Meeting her in person, without anything covering my face? That was scary.

I didn't want to flake out. When I had called her from a payphone to arrange a get-together she had seemed really excited to be able to talk to me which had, in turn, made me look forward to the meeting. As much as Malcanthet was a friend to me, as much as I enjoyed spending time with her, at the end of the day she didn't have second thoughts about using her mental powers to rape somebody. If I could become friends with Lisa, that would be a big help in ensuring I didn't end up adopting too many demonic views.

 _Alright Taylor, no more pussyfooting around. Get off your butt, go into that restaurant, and become friends with Lisa._

Thoroughly convinced ( _yea right, more like false confidence)_ I stood up and walked into Troppo Costoso Cibo. As I was about to walk up to the host, _this place was fancy though, does that make him a maitre d?_ I saw Lisa waving at me so I made my way over to her booth in the corner.

"Did you get tired of sitting out there with no food or did you genuinely work up the courage to come in here?" Lisa asked with a knowing grin.

"Little from column A, little from column B," I said, embarrassed. I was pretty hungry.

"Well in that case let's get you some food. Don't bother with the pizza here." I looked up sharply at Lisa but she continued speaking, unperturbed. "Yea, yea, yea. It's what they're famous for and all that. But because it's their claim to fame they charge out the nose for a pizza that is basically the same as what you can get over at 800 Degrees. That being said, the guy making the food here is a legitimate Italian chef so any of the pasta dishes are amazing."

"So Bubbles, you got a name?" Lisa asked after the waiter came and took my order (Lisa had placed her's while I was outside).

"Er...for now let's go with...Annette." Okay, using my mother's name and my middle name wasn't exactly the stuff spy novels were made of but I wasn't trying to fool her, just give her a name to call me until I was comfortable around her. Judging by her smile Lisa knew this as well.

"Alright Annette, how much do you know about the unwritten rules?"

"Um...nothing."

"The abridged version is basically this: capes don't try to figure out the identity of other capes. Doesn't matter if its heroes or villains, it's considered bad form to go after someone in their secret identity. Do you remember Fleur of New Wave?"

I nodded. I was too young to actually remember it happening but I still knew the story. Shortly after New Wave had unmasked Fleur had been killed while in her civilian identity by a member of the E88 looking to prove himself. Said gang member hadn't lasted long, though no one really knew what happened to him.

"See, even though New Wave had unmasked, it was still not approved of to go after them when they were out of costume. Sure, the system isn't foolproof. Some people treat the rules more like guidelines but in general it works. Prevents a war of escalation."

"And the PRT is okay with that?"

"Sure, ever notice how when most villains are caught, even if they're being sent to the Birdcage, their secret identities aren't mentioned? Heck, the Endbringer Truces aren't even unwritten. Those are official, documented policy."

"Huh, that...well is kind of hard to argue against."

What Lisa was saying made sense. Much like when she was claiming villains like her were to help train heroes for serious fights, I was trying to find holes in her arguments, I wanted to find out she was wrong or was lying to me, but I couldn't do it.

Lisa snapped her fingers and dug into her purse. "By the way, I got this for you," she said as she pulled out a cell phone. "It's pre-paid and got my number saved in if you want to contact me that way instead of doing it through PHO. Don't use it for personal stuff, it's usual good for capes to have two phones, one for when they're in costume and one for when they're not."

I stared at the phone uneasily. Neither Dad nor myself had a cellphone after what happened to Mom. Getting one now felt like such a big event, I wasn't sure I was ready for it.

"Come on~nnn," Lisa said in a sing-songy voice while she shook her hand for emphasis. "Take it."

"Fine."

When our food arrived the conversation slowed a bit as we ate but Lisa continued to lecturing me about various aspects of cape life. She pointed out how (with a few very notable exceptions) rape or sexual abuse of capes after a fight was quite rare because, whether hero or villain, the cape community tended to police itself and eliminate such offenders. She said that if I went into a hospital with a serious injury the staff would make an effort to leave my mask on (not that I wore a mask when I was inside of Ivan). Lisa even explained the laws regarding collecting booty from and/or bounties on criminals as well as other potential methods of funding for an independent hero. Product endorsements were a big thing though very few capes tried their hand at Hollywood, surprisingly.

As we finished the meal (which Lisa insisted on paying for and I wasn't going to argue) Lisa explained the power classification system used by the PRT. I vaguely recalled a rhyme I had heard years before that listed the categories but there were numbers that went along with it as well. Although there weren't any hard rules to how the numbers worked, apparently they referred more to the threat level of the parahuman than to actual power ability. Lisa said she was a Thinker and that I was a Changer/Brute with a possible Breaker rating. I didn't mention that I was actually a Master but I think Lisa knew I was hiding something about my powers from the odd looks she gave me during the discussion.

When we left the restaurant Lisa didn't put a pause in the conversation to indicate that we should part ways so I walked with her while she warned me about the dangers of using my powers on civilians and that Assault With A Parahuman Ability was treated much more seriously by the law than ordinary assault and would receive longer sentencing. She also brought up how certain powers (biotinkers and high powered masters being the big ones) always got very harsh punishments even for relatively minor crimes. The way Lisa phrased it, any excuse to control and keep an eye on people with scary powers, the government took it.

Then the conversation drifted back to money and Lisa told me about a parahuman banker called Number Man who managed cape accounts and was well known for being trustworthy. She made sure I wrote down his number. Then I learned that there were insurance firms that would offer health, life, and dental coverage for independent heroes and rogues. If that was true it certainly lent credibility to the unwritten rule about not finding out someone's secret identity.

It was only when Lisa and I started talking about how certain capes were barred from getting jobs in certain industries that I realized I didn't know where we were. We had gone north from the restaurant so we had to be somewhere in the Docks but beyond that I was clueless.

"Don't worry," Lisa said as we turned into an alley. "I can give you directions on how to get wherever. Honestly, my legs were on autopilot. Didn't realize I had almost taken you back to the nefarious lair of the Undersiders until I noticed you worrying."

While I had quickly picked up on the fact that Lisa's default expression was basically a knowing smirk, when she said 'nefarious lair' the smirk morphed into the biggest grin I have ever seen her pull off. I don't know whether she was doing it to push my buttons or whether she simply got a kick out of being a villain and getting to say that she had a lair (knowing her, probably both).

They alley deposited us behind what looked to be an abandoned foundry or some kind of metal-working factory. There was a series of big bay doors several feet off the ground along one section of the building. It took me a minute to realize they were spaced like that so that 18-wheelers could back their trailers right up to the doors. Guess that meant this was the warehouse section of the building.

One of the bay doors was rolled up and I could see… _crap, that was Grue and Regent trying to lift a big leather couch up into the building!_ They didn't have their masks on but it was obvious who they were.

"Lisa!" I hissed as I grabbed her arm. "When you said you'd almost taken me back to your lair, I thought that was a sign that you'd take me somewhere else. I don't _want_ to know where you guys hang out, you're villains! I also don't want them knowing I know where you hang out!"

"Relax Annette, you're a good person, I trust you. And they trust me. It'll be fine." Lisa patted my arm in what was probably a patronizing manner and continued walking forward. "Hey Brian, Alec, need a hand? I brought muscle."

Lisa's announcement caused the two guys to glance over at us as they set the couch down.

"Yea? Who?" Grue asked politely but with a look on his face that basically said 'Why did you bring this unknown person to our hideout?'

"This is Annette, I promised to meet with her so I took her out to lunch. She's still got more to learn so we ended up walking back together. I'll take her home in a few hours after we're done talking."

Grue had a puzzled expression on his face but Regent was quicker on the uptake. "Good to see you again, I'm Alec-Okay pleasantries done. Now how about you change into a ramp so we can get this upstairs quicker?

"Abnormal?" Brian asked.

"I'm still not fond of the name," I said nervously. I fought back the urge to hide behind my hair. I wanted to be anywhere but here.

"It's nice to meet you in a more casual setting when you're all..." Brian gestured up and down at me. "You know, normal." He smiled at me, the kind of warm, legitimate smile you expect to see on someone like Legend, not on a teenage supervillain.

I managed a weak smile in return. "Yea, it was like Lisa said. We met for lunch and when we finished eating the conversation never really stopped so we ended up back here. She's been very helpful."

"Yea, Lisa is pretty smart when she manages to keep her ego in check," Brian agreed, to which Lisa casually flipped him off in response though I could tell there wasn't any malice on either of their parts.

"Yes yes, Lisa's very smart. Okay, now that we've all agreed on that, can we go back to the more serious problem of the couch?" Alec said with a bit of annoyance in his voice. "I've been waiting for this ever since Brian ruined the last one and we had to throw it out."

Lisa rolled her eyes and said, "We have a spare you know."

"It wasn't as comfy as the white one and it damn sure isn't as comfy as this one, speaking of-" Alec motioned impatiently at the couch. "Let's go~oooo."

"How'd Brian ruin a couch?" I asked as Lisa and I walked forward. "Even a really bad soda spill should be cleanable."

"Shadow Stalker shot me and I bled all over it. Wouldn't have been worth it trying to clean it," Brian grunted and rubbed his stomach. Obviously not something he enjoyed remembering.

"What?!"

"Yep," Lisa nodded at my shocked outburst. "She isn't supposed to use real crossbow bolts after she almost killed a mugger. That's actually how she got shanghaied into the Wards, been on probation ever since. She's supposed to only use tranquilizer bolts that Armsmaster made for her, but she really doesn't like Grue. Her power interact weirdly with his so she breaks the rules and hopes not to get caught. If her bosses ever find out she'll get sent to juvie or a containment zone like Madison."

"Yea, she's got a hate boner that would look big on Behemoth."

"Alec...just…ew." Lisa said with a shake of her head.

"En-ee-way," Alec said, enunciating each syllable. "Couch?"

No one got a chance to respond. There was a loud barking coming from inside the building and the next thing I knew I had been separated from the group by three snarling dogs that were forcing me back into the open parking lot.

My attention was jumping back and forth between the three dogs but I did glance up quickly when I heard Brian shout, "Call off your dogs!" He was yelling at a girl standing in the open bay door, who, given the scenario, had to be Bitch.

Unfortunately, by looking away from them, the dogs got the opportunity they needed to attack me. The largest dog grab onto my wrist and pulled me to my knees. This allowed the other two dogs to bite and scratch at my legs since I was no longer capable of kicking them away.

"Call off the damned dogs!" Brian bellowed.

The dog biting my arm jerked its head, I could feel some skin tearing. I let out a wordless cry of pain and had quick thought of _somebody do something_ which was quickly followed by the familiar sound of a demon teleporting in. _That wasn't what I meant!_

I heard a high pitched yelp as the dog on my arm was abruptly pulled away from me. It was hard to make out through the tears that were forming in my eyes but it looked like the dog soared clear across the parking lot until hitting a chain link fence. The two dogs attacking my legs backed off with a pair of yelps after I heard two crunching noises. Following that, there was a lot of shouting.

"You hurt my dogs!"

"It was your fault for attacking her!"

"Annette, are you okay?!"

"What is that thing? I thought she was a Changer."

"Brutus could be dead!"

"Only because you told him to attack her!"

 _Too much yelling, make them shut up for a little bit,_ I mentally told whichever demon I had summoned as I pulled myself into a sitting position and gingerly looked at my arm.

"THE ABYSS GIVEN FORM COMMANDS YOU MEWLING MORTALS TO BE SILENT!" The declaration was quickly followed by two more sounds that resembled whips being cracked.

 _Wait...that was distinctly two different voices. I thought I had only summoned one demon._

Wiping the tears off my face, I surveyed the scene around me.

Bitch had hopped down from the loading dock and couldn't seem to decided who she wanted to glare at: me, Brian, or my demon. Brian was glaring right back at her. Lisa was looking at me with a worried expression on her face while Alec was looking up with an expression of awe on his.

I followed his gaze to the demon standing over top of me. He was big, I probably could have stood up and walked between his legs, which I was currently sitting between. The more noticeable features were his lack of arms, instead he had two reptilian tail-like appendages extending from each shoulder. The reason I heard two voices was because he had two baboon heads atop his torso.

I recognized the demon because I had heard so much about him. The Prince of Demons: Demogorgon. Up until now I deliberately avoided summoning him because everyone (even Malcanthet who was an ally and occasional lover of his _ew, ew ew, mental image!_ ) said he was both very powerful and very insane. Evidently, his two heads did not get along.

Once I got control of my breathing I steadily rose to my feet. Lisa looked like she wanted to come forward to help me but one glance up at Demogorgon's growling faces was enough to keep her where she was.

"What the hell was that about?" I shouted. Demogorgon curled and flicked out his arms, creating the whip crack from early. He timed it so that the sound occurred right when I finished speaking. It was pretty theatric.

Rather than answer, Bitch just glared at me.

My initial reaction was to de-escalate, to dismiss Demogorgon. But then I realized that I wasn't in school, I didn't have to keep my powers hidden. It was just me and a group of villains.

 _Fuck it,_ I thought and summoned another demon.

Vucarik, the Consort of Chains, appeared behind Bitch. Vucarik definitely lived up to his title. He was only about six feet tall, and looked like a mummy that had been wrapped in chains rather than cloth. Vucarik's chains weren't tightly wound like a mummy's cloth would be, they tended to sag and uncoil as he moved. The disgusting part was I was pretty sure Vucarik didn't have any skin as I had occasionally caught glimpses of organs pulsating in his chest the last time I had summoned him. He had tightened up his chains at my request previously but when he showed up this time I could see they were pretty loose. Blood and ichor was already starting to ooze out from between the links.

With a quick mental command I had Vucarik kicked Bitch in the back before she had turned around at the sound of his arrival. She stumbled forward and when she started to correct her balance Vucarik unwound one of the chains from around his head ( _ew, I can see his brain_ ) and sent it whipping forward. It smashed into the back of Bitch's knees and she tumbled to the ground. Before she could do anything else Vucarik used the chains in his legs like coiled springs to launch himself up so that he smashed down on top of Bitch, knocking the air from her lungs. He stood up but kept a foot on her back, I could see she was having trouble catching her breath but beyond that she didn't struggle.

The silence was broken by the sound of slow clapping. Everyone, my demons included, turned to look at Alec.

"That. Was. Awesome!" He shouted with glee. "I thought your impression of a purple snot monster was freaky, but these guys are downright epic! How many power do you have?"

"That's not the important issue at the moment, Alec." Brian said while pinching the bridge of his nose.

Lisa eyed me carefully. "Annette, those bites look pretty bad. Do you want me to fix up some of them for you? We've got a first-aid kit upstairs."

"No! Screw you, and screw your group! I told you I didn't want to be here but you said to trust you. Well look where that got me!" I waved my wounded arm for emphasis. I took a calming breath before continuing. "Unlike you people I'm not a dick so I won't tell anyone about you guys or your hideout but I'm done. I'm going home."

I summoned Pazuzu, a demon I knew that had wings, who promptly picked me up bridal style and took flight. Once I was in the air I dismissed Demogorgon and Vucarik. I saw all three dogs make their way over to Bitch, though all three were limping pretty heavily. I wasn't sure how to feel about all three of them surviving.

I looked at Pazuzu as he flew through the air. He, like Vucarik, was a normal height. His only demonic features were the four feathery wings that extended from his back and face which was half-hawk. He wasn't as muscled as Graz'zt, but he was certainly well built.

 _Ugh, why am I only attracted to horrible people?_

That wasn't really fair. Brian didn't seem like a horrible person, even if he was a villain and hung out with a chick who would set her dogs on someone for no reason.

I sighed as I looked at my arm. It was pretty torn up. I had been ignoring the pain because of all the excitement but now that I was calming down it was really starting to hurt.

"Know of any Demon Lords that are good healers?" I asked Pazuzu.

"Soneillon, The Youthful Crone, earned her title due to her perpetual rejuvenation. I believe you're already familiar with Dwiergus. There's also Alrunes, The Soothing Spirit."

"Soothing Spirit? That's hardly a title I would expect a Demon Lord to want."

Despite carrying me in his arms while flying, Pazuzu somehow managed to shrug. "Not all titles are to impress, sometimes they are so the bearer is underestimated."

"Makes sense," I said as we lapsed into silence. The only audible noise was the beating of Pazuzu's wings as we traveled. We didn't have too far to travel, my house was pretty close to the Docks. Now that I thought about it, maybe I should have Pazuzu land within walking distance of home. Didn't want to out myself to the neighbors by touching down in the backyard.

"Hey," a feminine voice called out. "What's going on here?"

I craned my neck around to look behind me, to Pazuzu's left. Flying along beside us was a blond girl, slightly older than me, dressed in a white outfit. She had a cape and a golden tiara on her head. _A cape wearing an actual cape, don't see that too often._ The most important thing about her however, was that she wasn't wearing a mask.

Glory Girl was flying next to me and I wasn't even in costume.

"The big guy is rescuing you and not kidnapping you, right?"

I was momentarily confused by the question. It was only when I really thought about it that I realized what Glory Girl was thinking. She didn't think I was a cape that had summoned Pazuzu with my power, she thought HE was a cape and that I was just some random normal person.

"Um, yea. I was attacked by some dogs and he rescued me."

As I spoke Glory Girl gently rotated overtop of Pazuzu and then came down on his right side. I guess she had noticed how uncomfortable is was for me to talk to her with my head turned around.

"Okay, no worries. He's a unknown cape and, no offense dude but you look kinda like a male version of The Simurgh, so I had to check."

Pazuzu looked over at Glory Girl and smiled. It wasn't a pleasant smile, it was the kind of smile a cat would have when it saw a mouse that it really wanted to eat. I suddenly remembered what else he was known for. Besides being the Prince of the Lower Aerial Kingdoms (why anyone would want a title that was that much of a mouthful was beyond me) Pazuzu was very found of tricking anyone he viewed as a bastion of morality until they were as corrupt and evil as he was.

 _Don't you dare,_ I mentally ordered. _You tell her what I tell you to tell her and nothing else, got it?_

Pazuzu glanced at me briefly with an expression on his face that was reminiscent of a pout. _How did he pout when his mouth is basically a beak?_ When I glared at him Pazuzu sighed and looked back at Glory Girl.

"Don't worry miss, I'm aware of how I look," Pazuzu said as I mentally feed him his lines. "It's one reason why I don't stay in one place for very long. I imagine I'll be moving out of the city within a week."

"You don't have to do that!" Glory Girl argued. "I'm sure the Protectorate would be willing to let you join, or failing that I could talk to my family. New Wave could always use more members. You don't have to be hero without a home."

 _That is the exact opposite of what I want. You need to leave, not take a vested interest in trying to help my demon!_

Pazuzu snorted before I could stop him. That caused Glory Girl to pull back with a start. I was going to chastise him but decided his reaction opened up the possibility of a different excuse than what I had been planning. Glory Girl would want to hang out with a hero and would be suspicious if he didn't want to stick around. That wouldn't be the case if she thought he was a villain. I had Pazuzu subtly alter his course.

"Just because I rescued this girl from some dogs attacking her doesn't make me a hero. You shouldn't make assumptions like that."

"So you're a villain then?" Glory Girl asked, her eyes narrowing.

"What I am is someone who looks like 'a male version of The Simurgh' as you so accurately put it. Do you think I can walk into a store to buy food? Or do you think I have to rob so I don't starve because people don't want to associate with me? Which one seems more likely?"

Glory Girl seemed torn. "How many crimes are you wanted for?"

"It doesn't matter. My point is that I am what I am. Don't try to change me."

"If you're a criminal I'm going to have to bring you in," Glory Girl said sternly.

I felt an overwhelming sense of fear and dread for no discernable reason. Luckily, Pazuzu had a response ready while I was busy trying not to randomly burst into tears.

"Really? An aerial battle? While I'm holding someone? What outcome do foresee coming about from that?"

Glory Girl's eyes flicked to me and she grimaced. "So I'm supposed to just let you go?"

The impending fear I was feeling suddenly dissipated. _What the heck was going on with me?_

"Unless you're willing to risk endangering a innocent civilian so you can attempt to bring me in, yes."

"Or I could just wait for you to set her down wherever it is you're taking her."

"Well I was taking her to her home, but in case you haven't noticed, I diverted course when you showed up."

Glory Girl looked around. We were now significantly higher than we had been as well as out over the bay, somewhat near downtown.

"I can't imagine it would look very good for a hero, such as yourself, to go about fighting me when you have someone that needs rescuing. Especially when soooo many people could be watching us."

"What are you talking about?" Glory Girl asked, brow furrowed.

And here was the part of my plan I had not been looking forward to.

"This," Pazuzu said right before he dropped me.

I didn't have to fake my scream as I fell.


	7. 1-6

Flying when I was in Ivan was fun and exhilarating but it wasn't scary. I knew that I was in control of my wings and that even if something went wrong and I fell to the ground, Ivan's very nature ensured that I would be fine regardless of how hard I landed. Just gather up the pieces and reform.

Falling through the air as myself was terrifying, especially since I couldn't summon up a demon to catch me. I was relying on Glory Girl to fly down and get me rather than chase after Pazuzu, which wasn't 100% guaranteed. Sure, she was a hero and all but I'd never met her. I was relying on what I knew about Glory Girl from press releases and posts on the PHO website. For all I knew she could secretly be a nut job like Shadow Stalker. _If that turns out to be the case…_

Luckily, my fear turned out to be pointless as my fall was slowed and then stopped by Glory Girl's grip on both my arms.

"Are you okay?" She asked, looking down at me.

"You're holding my arm right where the dog bit me so that hurts a lot," I said. "But you just saved my life so it feels wrong to complain."

"Crap, sorry! I forgot about that, lemme get you to the ground."

We began floating downward. I could see Pazuzu had followed my directions and was flying even higher after dropping me. He was heading towards a nearby set of clouds, my plan was once he got inside of one and was obscured from view I would send him back to the Abyss. That plan was drastically altered when he randomly vanished from the sky.

 _Pazuzu, what happened!? Where are you?_

Pazuzu's voice spoke in my head. "I'm back on Pazunia. I assumed you sent me back early when no one was watching."

 _No, I didn't send you back. I was waiting for you to make it to the cloud like I told you._

"Well Mistress, that is certainly a puzzle to be looked into."

I sent back the mental equivalent of a grunt of agreement.

As we reached the ground Glory Girl turned to scan the sky. When she didn't see Pazuzu she turned back to me. "I don't suppose you can tell me anything about that guy?"

"I was attacked by some dogs after I got lost in the Docks. He picked me up and was flying me home when you showed up."

I wasn't going to be winning any awards for acting so I decided to keep things as simple and avoid lying if at all possible.

Glory Girl frowned. "That's not much to go on."

"Sorry, he spoke more to you than he did to me. When we were flying he never even told me his name." Which was true, because I already knew his name.

"Hmmm, well you said you were attacked by dogs?" I nodded. "Alright, I was on my way to the hospital to pick up my sister when I saw you guys. I can take you there and have her check you for rabies."

I actually hadn't considered that. Bitch's dogs seemed to do what she told them but I didn't know how her power worked, for all I knew they could have had rabies.

"Yes please, it would also be nice to get away from all the gawkers."

"Gawkers?" Glory Girl looked around in confusion, apparently not realizing where we were. We had landed right next to the forcefield bridge that took tourists and PRT employees to the Protectorate HQ out in the bay. Several people had their cell phones out and were filming us. Glory Girl struck a bit of a pose before turning back to me. "Don't let my fans worry you, now let's get you to the hospital."

I couldn't help but notice that Glory Girl had said that in a slightly more 'official' and 'authoritative' sounding voice.

Rather than pick me up bridal style like Pazuzu or by my wrists like she had before, Glory Girl came up behind me and hooked her arms underneath mine and across my chest.

"Comfy?" She asked.

"I'm good."

The words had barely left my mouth before we took off. It was faster than when I was flying with Ivan but not so much that I felt like I was on a motorcycle without a helmet. It was the perfect speed for flying for fun. I couldn't help it, I laughed with simple, unadulterated joy.

"Yea, a lot of people have that reaction the first time I take them flying." Glory Girl said in an amused tone. "Heck, Amy still does it."

"That's your sister, Panacea, right?"

"Yep, best healer and second best sister around!" Glory Girl happily proclaimed.

"Second best?"

"Well obviously **I'm** the best sister around."

"Ah, of course." I wasn't entirely sure if Glory Girl was being silly or whether she honestly thought she was that awesome.

"So how do you want to handle the PRT?" Glory Girl asked after a few moments.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you were rescued by what seems to be a new villain in the area. I don't know how long he's going to be here but I need to let my family know to keep an eye out for him, they will then tell the Protectorate, who will then tell the PRT." Glory Girl paused. "Or I'll tell one of the Wards who will tell the Protectorate who will tell the PRT. The point is, give it a day and a half and all the good guys will know there's a new villain in town. They will want to know as much about him as possible so they'll interview me about him. They will also want to interview you."

I cringed. "Um, do they have to?"

I could practically hear the smile in Glory Girl's voice as she spoke. "Based on how you acted when all those people were watching us I figured you wouldn't want to talk anybody, guess you don't like being the center of attention. So how about after Amy fixes you up I give you money for the bus and you take that home because flying scared you after everything that happened. I don't know your name so when I'm asked I can say I have no idea who you are or where you live. Plus," Glory Girl's voice suddenly became sheepish. "It's sorta my fault he dropped you since I was threatening him and all that. Seems like I could make up for that by keeping you out of the spotlight."

That was perfect. I didn't want the attention of the PRT or Protectorate and Glory Girl was worried about getting into trouble for provoking Pazuzu so she doesn't want me talking to them either.

"I am totally okay with this plan."

"Great! And perfect timing too, there's Amy."

We landed at the edge of the main parking lot for Brockton Bay Central Hospital next to a girl I recognized as Panacea from the white monk-like robes she wore.

"Heya Ames, this girl got attacked by some dogs. Can you check and make sure she doesn't have rabies or anything?"

Panacea turned to look at me, a slight frown on her face. At first I thought she was angry at me but then I noticed how exhausted she looked. She had probably been healing people all day and just when she thought she was done and ready to go home I got dropped on her. I was reminded of my Dad, always bringing work home with him, never able to let it go, just one more person to help.

"Do I have your permission to heal you?"

"Yea, of course, so long as it isn't too much trouble. I don't want to be a bother."

"Pu-leaze, healing some bite marks is no trouble at all for my sister."

When Panacea first touched me her eyes got a bit unfocused, like she wasn't really looking at me anymore, but then she suddenly startled and looked at me a bit more intently for a just a second.

"Well I don't see rabies or anything else like that. Just some bite and scratch marks, though some of those were pretty bad. You were lucky Glory Girl found you when she did," Panacea said as she withdrew her hand from my wrist.

"Here's a ten for the bus ride," Glory Girl said as she handed me the money. I briefly wondered where she had kept it, I hadn't noticed any pockets in her costume.

"Thank you for the money. And thank you Panacea for healing me, glad to hear I don't have rabies."

"Ames, you won't believe how she and I met," Glory said and she got behind Panacea and hooked her arms around her the same way she had carried me. "So I'm leaving the house to come get you when I spot this guy with big ole wings coming out of his back flying along..."

Glory Girl's voice faded away as she flew off with her sister.

All in all, I'd say that today went well. As pissed as I was at her, I couldn't deny that I had learned a lot about the cape scene from Lisa. Maybe I'd call her in a couple days after I had cooled off but I wasn't going to be meeting her or her group in person anymore, even if I had made sure they knew not mess with me…well maybe Brian, he seemed nice. _Nice body too._

I even got to meet two superheroes today. Panacea was a little out of it but Glory Girl lived up to her reputation. _Actually_ , I flexed my arms experimentally, _they both live up to their reputations, nothing hurts at all._

 _Come to think of it, I had also learned something new about my power_. It seemed like if the Demon Lords got too far away from me they automatically got sent back to the Abyss. Something to look into at another time.

* * *

"This 'stock market' is an amazing concept but I'm baffled that it still works. Someone attempting to manipulate it for their own ends could cause the whole thing to come crashing down."

I looked up from where I had my homework laid out on the kitchen table. Though I sometimes wondered why I bothered doing it, a lot of it was just going to get stolen or defaced before I'd be able to turn it in. Malcanthet was in the living room, reading an encyclopedia.

"You're not exactly wrong," I answered. "But there's several factors preventing that."

"Like what?"

"For starters, the PRT employs numerous thinkers to prevent that exact thing. Then there's the additional fact that ever since the Simurgh, practically everything is decentralized now. Nothing is supposed to have a single point of failure. So there is no permanent stock exchange now."

"But a large group of people working together could manage to do something, right?"

"I know the Elite have tried. I'm sure other groups have made attempts. Why are you so focused on this?"

"There's a story all succubi know. It's changed over the years but it always involved a succubi and some kind of very big, very strong, very stupid demon. The succubi and the other demon start a bet about who can steal more of something from mortals. The specifics of the story change but the point is, at the end, the succubi has subtly used her influence to win the bet over the other demon's straightforward methods. The story always ends with the quote, 'I can steal more with a kiss than you can ever hope to steal with a sword.' It's a lesson all succubi know very well. Why hasn't someone used a kiss to dismantle this operation to enrich themselves? It's just so **obvious** to me, how I would use it."

"So it's pride of your profession, like a fisherman looking at an improperly cast net?"

Malcanthet paused to think about my comparison before nodding. "Yes, as the Queen of the Succubi I just can't leave it alone. It's just begging to be taken advantage of."

I chuckled. "You are probably the most well behaved Demon Lord I have met and yet you're talking about rigging the entire stock market for personal gain…" I trailed off as I realized how little it bothered me that Malcanthet was casually talking about causing financial ruin to millions of people.

"Is something the matter Mistress?"

"It's…you're talking about causing potentially enormous economic damage and I'm unperturbed. I want to be a hero and yet I find it difficult to feel concerned. That's basically the opposite of how a hero should feel."

"Oh I wouldn't say that's necessarily the case Mistress," Malcanthet said as she bookmarked her page and set the encyclopedia down. The demoness got her from where she lay on the couch and walked over to my table. "Heroes and villains are defined by how their actions are perceived, rather than the reasons behind those actions."

"What do you mean?"

"When you traversed the city with Ivan, you would often summon me for company, remember?"

"Of course, Ivan's a nice guy but he's not a great conversationalist."

"During these excursions I would passively read all the people we came near-I didn't influence them in anyway!" Malcanthet quickly explained as I was about to interrupt her. When I didn't speak up she continued talking. "I was just doing it to learn. Anyway, those that knew of her all thought of the parahuman Purity as a villain."

My brow furrowed. "The Nazi? Why wouldn't they think that?"

"On one of our trips we passed by the very tall building that housed numerous affluent families…"

"The Towers," I supplied.

"Yes, when we passed by the Towers I read the people I could see through the windows. One of them was Purity."

"What? How did I not notice her? She glows like the sun!"

"She wasn't displaying her powers, I only found out she was Purity after I read her mind."

"Malcanthet," I groaned. "I went over this with you after the whole thing with Lisa remember, the unwritten rules?"

The Demon Lord raised her hands placatingly. "I know, I know. I'm not telling you this so I can 'out' her. There is an actual point, trust me."

"Alright, continue."

"All the people that knew of her thought Purity was a villain with the Empire 88. When I read Purity I discovered that she had left the group and was trying to be a hero and had been fighting the ABB."

"Really?" I leaned back in my chair. "Huh, I hadn't heard anything about that on PHO or the news."

"Exactly, she is still perceived as a villain. Even if she is seen fighting the ABB, it's viewed as two gangs fighting, rather than a hero fighting criminals. Contrast that with Shadow Stalker, who is viewed as a hero. She nearly killed Grue, despite it being against the rules, both unwritten and the ones the PRT put in place for her."

"Okay so there are good villains and bad heroes. I'm still not seeing your point."

"My point, Mistress, is that you need figure out what it is you want to accomplish. If you want to maintain an arbitrary title as bestowed upon you by the public and the PRT there is nothing wrong with that. If you want to do whatever you view is necessary to remove crime in your city there is nothing wrong with that. But you do need to realize that those two goals will **not** always be in agreement and you will have to pick one over the other at various points in your career." Malcanthet then wore a far too innocent looking smile that I didn't believe for a second. "Imagine what you could accomplish with all the money I could access in the stock market, just as a random example."

I rolled my eyes. "I swear, sometimes I feel like you're trying to corrupt me. I'll admit you have a point in that I can't be a slave to PR, with my power that was never really an option anyway, but that doesn't mean I'm going to let you run around committing crimes. There's a difference between ignoring rules that are a hindrance and deliberately breaking the law."

"If you say so Mistress."

* * *

It had taken a fair amount of research into the aerodynamics behind it, but I could now stretch myself out like a kite or a parachute and glide along the air currents above the city. The gliding wasn't the hard part, steering without losing too much altitude was what was difficult. That being said, I could always just drift overtop of the road whenever I needed to gain height. The black pavement was warmed by the sun and that created heat columns of air that would pick me up and carry me along.

I was slowly making my way south, down past the Boardwalk into what I thought of as the well-to-do part of the city. City Hall, the PRT headquarters, the financial district, Medhall, Arcadia, were all down in this area. I had another joint patrol with the Wards, this time it was Clockblocker and Vista. We were going to start at the PRT building and head down to the south eastern part of the city (which was best described as 'suburbia') and then loop back to where we began. I wasn't sure where I was supposed to meet the Wards. I wasn't about to just land on the PRT building without permission, they'd probably think I was some villain attacking them and I'd end up foamed.

 _Although, I wonder if containment foam would even work on me. Can Ivan eat it?_

My musings were put on hold as I noticed Vista and Clockblocker waiting atop a building next to the PRT headquarters, I think it was offices for a credit company though I wasn't sure. I let myself gently float onto to the roof and reformed into my humanoid shape as soon as I touched down. I took a bit longer than I would have liked, I had to stretch myself pretty thin to glide and it felt weird to have that much surface area and then shrink down to normal sized.

"You just went from looking like the exploded remains of a hot air balloon that was somehow still afloat to a candlewax monster, consider me suitably impressed."

"What Clockblocker is trying to say," Vista said as she elbowed him in the ribs. "Is that you're really getting the hang of your powers for someone so new."

"Thanks. So I know Vista, it's nice to meet you Clockblocker. I've heard a lot of stories about you." I formed a hand on my arm and walked forward. "I'm Abnormal until I come up with a better name. And yes, I know I need to pick soon before I'm stuck with one I don't like. I've got a couple ideas bouncing around in my head but I can't decide which one I like."

"I'll have you know the story about the poodle and the bucket of chicken was totally Gallant's fault, I just took the blame for it so he wouldn't get in trouble. All the other stories are true though," Clockblocker said as we shook.

I couldn't see because of his mask but I was sure Clockblocker was grinning. I didn't know what poodle or bucket of chicken he was talking about but I had the feeling I would regret asking so I kept my mouth shut.

When it became obvious I wasn't rising to his bait, Clockblocker looked me up and down and then asked, "So need a good name, huh? Why not Gootrude?"

Vista and I both audibly groaned.

"Pick a snake form and you could go with Megoosa."

"Clockblocker," Vista said tiredly.

"If you were a guy I'd suggest Slimon Belmont."

"Clockblocker!"

"Oooo, how about Goobriela?"

"CLOCKBLOCKER!"

"Alright, alright. Geez, just trying to help."

I could only shake my head at Clockblocker's puns. "I see what you meant about most of his jokes not being that funny."

"Oiy!"

* * *

"What are you girls' thoughts on the new villain in town?" Clockblocker asked as we returned to the 'city' part of Brockton Bay after having completed our tour of the suburbs. Normally this sort of walk would take forever but with Vista shortening the distance we kept an excellent pace.

"Seraph is the name they picked out for him, right?"

"What new villain are you two talking about?" I asked.

"Three days ago Glory Girl ran into a Case 53 flying over the city that was maybe kidnapping maybe rescuing some girl. He admitted to being a criminal and then dropped the girl he was carrying. When Glory Girl dove to catch her, the unknown dude winged it out of there and hasn't been heard from since. Miss Piggy named him Seraph for the time being," Clockblocker explained.

"Case 53….why does that sound familiar?"

"Most people think it refers to cape that don't look like normal humans anymore, but there are actually a couple other qualifiers that I don't know if I'm allowed to tell you about, sorry Abnormal. I can say that you're not a Case 53 though." I was impressed that Clockblocker managed to come off as contrite despite wearing a costume that completely covered his body.

"From what Glory Girl said, Seraph looks mostly human but he's got these big Simrugh-like wings coming out of his back and his head is half bird," Vista grinned and then nudged me (apparently having forgotten that I was a slime girl) and started to sink into me before quickly pulling back with an eep. She brushed her costume and then resumed what she was going to say. "Glory Girl also said that he was built like Aegis, that's your type right?"

"Wait, you mean Gooretchen has a type and it's not time-stopping teenage superheroes?" Clockblocker mimed kicking a pebble on the street. "Damn, thought I had a chance there."

Clockblocker's sense of humor had grated at first, but it was starting to grow on me. I think part of it was that despite a lot of his jokes having me as a target, none of them were mean spirited. It wasn't like when the Trio and their cronies would laugh at me, Clockblocker was doing it in good fun.

"Sorry Clock, if I wanted to date a time-stopping teenage superhero I promise you, you'd be number one on the list," I paused. "Well, in the top five at any rate."

Clockblocker mock clutched his heart while Vista laughed.

"Besides, Pazuzu may have a good body he's way too much of an ass for me."

Vista stopped laughing and looked at me oddly. "Pazuzu?"

 _Oops._

I stuttered, unable to get any words out. "I…er…um…"

"That's what Seraph goes by? You've met him before?" Vista asked in a soft voice.

"Well…yea."

"Abnormal…" Vista began but paused, seemingly searching for the right words. "Just because they're friendly doesn't mean you have to hang out with a group of supervillains. You know the Wards are here for you."

I was speechless. _They think I'm hanging out with a group of supervillains? What?_

Before I could formulate a response a familiar voice called out. "Hey losers, who's the half-melted Grimace?"

Vista groaned and muttered under her breath while Clockblocker and I turned toward the voice. There was a darkly dressed cape atop the convenience store we were walking behind. Said cape jumped off the roof and her body went weird, it got all dark and sorta see through. She landed silently and her body changed back to normal as she stood in front of me.

"This is a new hero," Clockblocker said, introducing me. "For now, she's calling herself Abnormal. Abnormal, meet Shadow Stalker."


	8. 1-7

_I know her voice, how do I know her voice?_ I wondered as Shadow Stalker and Clockblocker argued. Apparently, she wasn't scheduled to patrol tonight and the Wards weren't supposed to go out and fight crime when they were off duty. Clockblocker said she needed to go home while Shadow Stalker said he'd never been Miss Piggy's bitch this much before.

Vista stood off to the side silently while I racked my brain trying to figure out why Shadow Stalker seemed so familiar to me. The mask muffled her voice but I knew I had definitely heard it before. _Stupid tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon, I know I've met her._

The argument had apparently reached its peak as Shadow Stalker threw up her hands in annoyance. "I don't know why I bother trying to convince you of anything, you're just prey like all the other weaklings."

 _Wait...did she just call Clockblocker prey?_

I only knew one person who used the terms predator and prey to describe people: Sophia Hess.

"Umm, Abnormal?"

Now that I knew that, I was able to easily recognize Shadow Stalker's voice as Sophia's. So many other things suddenly made sense. Why my complaints about the bullying never went anywhere. Why the teachers and staff were content to ignore it even when it happened in front of them. Why Sophia never seemed to get in trouble for **anything she ever did to me**.

"Abnormal?"

Everyone was covering for her because Sophia was a member of the Wards even though she wasn't even a good one! Based on what Lisa had told me Sophia was bloodthirsty and yet she was still allowed to run around and be a hero. She blatantly ignored the rules and despite the fact that she was supposed to be on probation nothing was done about it!

"Abnormal why are you getting bigger?" Vista practically shouted at me, drawing me from my thoughts.

I looked at myself, I was indeed larger than I had been. I was at least seven feet tall and had gained a fair bit of bulk. I would say it was all muscle but it wasn't like I had muscles while I was wearing Ivan.

"I'm getting bigger," I said while clamping down on the emotions that Ivan was sending my way. He really wanted me to attack Sophia. "Because I can't believe this bitch is your teammate."

"Well fuck you too," Sophia said as she moved her hands to the crossbows on her belt. I wasn't going to start a fight but I almost hoped she would attack me so I'd have an excuse to defend myself. Sadly, she didn't pull out her weapons.

Vista looked back and forth between the two of us. "You've met Shadow Stalker before?"

"Yea, I've met her," I said while shifting most of my eyes to the front of my body so they could focus on Sophia. "I would call her a cunt but she has neither the depth, the warmth, nor the capacity to give pleasure."

Clockblocker made a sound like he was choking on air as he brought his hand to his face. When Sophia turned to look at him he started coughing and then said, "Sorry...uh, a bug flew down my throat."

I don't think anyone believed him, and not just because his mask covered his mouth.

Sophia ceased looking at Clockblocker to turn and look back at me. Who am I kidding, she wasn't looking, she was glaring. "No wonder we're supposed to haul you in if you don't cooperate, I know dogs in heat that aren't as bitchy as you."

 _Don't attack Sophia in front of the other Wards, don't attack Sophia in front of the other Wards, don't attack Sophia in front of the other Wards._ I repeated the mantra in my head. No matter how much she deserved it, I didn't want to be labeled a villain for this. I mentally counted to ten to calm myself down. It was only at that point that I finally processed what Sophia had said besides the insult. _The Wards are supposed to arrest me?_

"What did she mean you guys are going to 'haul me in'?" I asked, turning to look at Vista.

"Abnormal…there's…okay look," Vista took a breath and composed herself. "Based on what you told me about the guy you liked, Director Piggot was worried you were spending time with the new supervillain in town, Seraph or Pazooz or whatever his name is. Clockblocker and I were supposed to make sure you weren't going to join a gang or anything, that's all. The Director did say that if we didn't find anything to make us think you were a hero that we should bring you in but just a few moments after meeting you Clockblocker was already convinced that you were fine!"

 _Why you conniving little…_

"Considering that you were under orders to try and arrest me if you thought I might be hanging out with Pazuzu, when you have a thug like Shadow Stalker on your team, I find all of this incredibly hypocritical. Not everyone I associate with is a saint but at least I would never torture and nearly kill an innocent girl."

I altered my body until I was nothing more than a pair of six foot tall legs and proceeded to stomp off. I could hear Shadow Stalker and Clockblocker start arguing again, though I wasn't sure about what.

"Abnormal wait!" Vista said from right next to me. I was tempted to ignore her and to take off at a run but I realized that with Vista's ability to alter space, she could probably keep up with me.

I sighed and stopped where I was. We had already walked a block in that short amount of time. I took a moment to be impressed at the distance we had covered before I focused on what Vista was saying.

"You're saying Shadow Stalker nearly killed a girl? What happened? How do you know about that?"

I was so angry about this whole situation that I didn't bother creating a mouth to talk, I just let my bubbles form on my legs. "I know about it because I pay attention to what goes on around me. If you and your teammates **don't** know about it that doesn't inspire much confidence considering Shadow Stalker is supposed to be on probation and theoretically should be closely watched."

Vista took a step back and looked at me suspiciously. "How did you know she's on probation?"

 _Is that really the issue you should be focusing on right now?_ I thought to myself. Outwardly, I simply said, "I have my sources."

"What you accused Shadow Stalker of is pretty serious. Will you come in and tell Miss Pigg-Director Piggot what you know?"

"The same Director that wanted you to haul me? Why bother? Shadow Stalker's crimes will just get covered up again."

"It won't get covered up!"

"It was before with the mugger, what makes you believe this time will be any different?"

"Well…because…because I won't let them!"

"If your Director told you to drop it because the investigation turned up nothing, would you continue to hound her, to ask her each day, about what was being done about Shadow Stalker? Especially considered that the only source of these accusation comes from a cape that's apparently only a step away from becoming a villain?"

"That's what I thought," I said when Vista failed to respond. "I liked you Vista, I want to be a hero, but I am not about to get involved with the PRT, Protectorate, or the Wards. Not after tonight."

My piece said, I walked off into the night. Vista didn't follow me this time.

* * *

I quietly snuck into the house. As much as I wanted to slam the doors in frustration, I was still thinking clearly enough to know that waking up my dad wouldn't help matters.

I was actually glad that Bitch had attacked me with her dogs earlier in the week. Prior to that I had thought I needed to vocalize a request in order to summon a demon. Learning that I could summon a Demon Lord just by being particularly emotional meant I made sure to clamp down on my thoughts when I was dealing with Sophia. I did not need to accidentally bring in something that would tear a Ward limb from bloody limb, however much I might want that.

Between that and learning that my demons unsummoned when they got a certain distance away from me was really driving home the fact that I did not know enough about my core powers. I'd been spending so much time inside of Ivan ( _wow that sounded dirty_ ) that I had stopped experimenting with my primary power. I needed to figure it out more, and not just in the sense of figuring out which Demon Lords I could summon, I really needed to work on it, find out my strengths and weaknesses. Better that I find out about a limitation during testing rather than in the middle of a fight where it might cost somebody their life.

 _Okay, so I need to cut back on Ivan time because I'll get easily distracted otherwise. Actually, should I consider retiring him?_

It was a bit of an unpleasant thought. I had fun wearing Ivan, he was eager to please and I felt I was really getting the hang of his powers. But Ivan, or rather Abnormal, was probably wanted by the PRT now and that could cause a lot of problems in the future if I was in the process of stopping a mugger and Armsmaster or someone shows up and tried to arrest me rather than the criminal.

 _Ivan's really hard to keep a hold of so I could probably get away if they tried to arrest me, but is it really worth the continuous hassle?_

I debated the answer as I tiptoed up the stairs.

 _Not only that. But if 'Abnormal' disappears the same time as some new parahuman appears on the scene, they might get suspicious of me...then again they think Pazuzu is a parahuman and in a new gang or something so...gah! What should I do?  
_  
I stared at my bedroom door, trying to reach a decision. Eventually, I realized I needed a clean break and to just start over.

 _Dweirgus_ , I mentally called out as I entered my bedroom. _I have a task for you_.

"Certainly Miss Taylor, how may I assist you?" Dweirgus responded.

 _Ivan is no longer a suitable costume, I'm pretty sure the local authorities want to arrest me...him...you know what I mean. So I need a different demon to wear._

"Did you have anything specific in mind?"

 _No, when I first saw Ivan I thought he would have been terrible but you knew what you were doing when you created him so I trust your judgement to come up with something suitable._

"Eeeexxxxcellent."

I cut the connection. Dweirgus's tone of voice at the end there had been downright creepy. I imagine Jack Slash sounded the same when he recruited a new member into the Nine.

 _What did I just agree to?_

* * *

"So Dweirgus isn't the only biotinker demon?"

"That is correct Taylor," Malcanthet answered from behind me. I had finally convinced her to stop putting 'Mistress' in front of my name, at least when we were alone. "Baphomet, Demogorgon, Lamashtu, and Pale Night are all associated, in various ways, with the creation of new demons. Dweirgus is the only one that tends to make modifications to the current crop, as it were."

"So he's not, necessarily, my only option."

"No, but he's probably your best option. Baphomet is constantly at war with Yeenoghu, while Lamashtu wants to kill Pazuzu so if you went to either of them you'd have to listen to constant complaints about that. Demogorgon is Demogorgon. And Pale Night is...let's go with reality breaking. Compare all of them to Dweirgus who has no specific enemies in the Abyss and who views his experimentation has a goal in and of itself as opposed to a means to an end, it's not much of a contest."

"Yeah, I suppose you're right," I conceded.

"Why are you asking me these question? If I may be so bold."

"I decided to stop using Ivan after a thing with the Wards, told Dweirgus to make me a new costume. He sounded eerily eager. It made me want to, at least, look at other options."

"What 'thing with the Wards' would you be referring to?"

 _Drat, I had hoped she would have focused on the Dweirgus bit and not that._

"It turns out Shadow Stalker is one of the girls that has been giving me problems at school. Also turns out that Vista blabbed stuff I told her in confidence about you guys to her boss so they thought I was hanging out with supervillains."

Malcanthet didn't say anything.

"Well?" I asked after several minutes of silence. "Don't you have an I-told-you-so speech prepared? We did have that discussion a few days ago where you pointed out that just because someone was labeled as a hero didn't mean they were good people. You were right, I was wrong."

"And what would my gloating at you accomplish? You're already aware that what I told you was correct. Rubbing it in your face serves no purpose beyond inflating my own ego at the expense of your self esteem and possibly our relationship."

"That's...really mature."

"It would be like if you and I had an argument and I resorted to flinging insults at you. People often forget that the goal of an argument is not to 'win' but to convince the other person to come around to your way of thinking. If I call you names until you give up and walk away, sure I've 'won' the argument but I've damaged our relationship by showing that I'm willing to resort to emotional attacks because I don't respect you enough to have a calm, intelligent conversation with you and that I value 'winning' more than I do your self worth."

I really had no idea how to respond to that.

While I was trying to formulate a response Malcanthet suddenly announced, "All finished! Whaddaya think?"

She handed me a mirror so I could see myself.

"...you gave me dreadlocks," I deadpanned.

"Oh, so you're familiar with the hairstyle? The mortals I learned it from called it Jata."

"You can undo this right?" I asked as I set down the mirror. "Because there is no way I'm leaving the house with dreadlocks."

"Of course," Malcanthet said. "I wouldn't do something permanent without your knowledge and permission."

"Good, I have enough problems at school. Don't need to add to them by showing up with dreadlocks."

"This hairstyle has negative connotations?" Malcanthet asked as she started tugging on my hair. I could feel my scalp tingling so I assumed she was using her powers (I still refused to call it magic) on it.

"Dreadlocks tend to be associated with black people, and the most well known black parahuman in the city is Skidmark."

"That's the degenerate drug dealer? If that's the case I can understand your reasoning." Malcanthet chuckled. "The difference between cultures is amusing. The first mortals that I saw wearing their hair like this were ascetic holy men."

"Ascetic holy men?"

I had the sudden mental image of Skidmark getting into a debate about hair.

 _Ya'll thundercunts are engaging in some cultural appropriation right here._

 _Sir, please stop cussing._

 _Why? What are you motherfuckers gonna do about it? Starve at me?! I was doing that first too. See these teeth? Eating ain't easy!_

 _Squealer mutters under her breath, 'that's his excuse anyway.'_

I giggled to myself.

"So you've got Dweirgus making you a new costume and are now more aware of the problems you will have to deal with if you want to stop crime in your city. What is your plan, going forward?"

"That's a good question, but it's one I don't have an answer to," I admitted. "Heck, I still haven't even decided what I'm going to do about the Undersiders. Should I ignore them? Do I keep talking with them? Could I ask Brian out but ignore the rest of them? Do I send one of you guys to go kill Bitch or Hellhound or whatever her name is?"

"Are you actually asking me or are you just venting?"

"I'm venting, I'm not about to ask a Demon Lord whether or not I should kill somebody...no offense."

Malcanthet's only response was rich laughter.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** And thus concludes the first arc. How'd you like it? Comments, concerns, predictions for the future? What will Taylor's next costume look like? Who will be the next demon she summons? What will her plan be for heroing?


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